Edge banding is a thin strip of plastic that is attached to the edge of a roof, wall, or floor. It helps cover and protect the exposed edge of the wood-like surface board from moisture and wear.
PVC edge banding can be used for outdoor or indoor applications. It has a good water resistance rate, which makes it suitable for outdoor applications such as swimming pool enclosures, terraces, balconies, etc., and also for indoor applications such as stairway balustrades and ceiling cladding.
PVC edge banding Tape is weatherproof and does not allow moisture to get in; it has good resistance to ultraviolet rays. It can also be used as an outdoor decoration which will not fade easily in the sun&#;s strong rays.
The reinforced edges on PVC edge banding make it very strong and durable while maintaining its flexibility under stress conditions. It can withstand even heavy traffic loads without sagging or cracking. In addition, it&#;s easy to install due to its lightweight features that do not add much weight to your project.
Compared to other materials such as wood or metal, its price is much lower than those materials due to its low-cost production process which involves fewer raw materials like plastic resins and recycled plastic waste which leads to lower costs
Covering up natural wood was once considered counterintuitive. Now, more than half the casework produced in North America is coated with paint, foil, or laminate and edge banding. While there are cost considerations, the choice of surface more often depends on taste than budget. Even old chippies will admit that today&#;s laminated surfaces have come so far that we now have the best of both worlds. Today&#;s surfaces are both pretty and tough, as manufacturers give us increasingly textured and photorealistic wood grain patterns, complex and dramatic designs, or moody monotones.
In February, the design team at REHAU published its opinions on laminate trends and cabinet finishes. The designers say that laminates and banding are &#;trending toward warmer finishes such as natural oak or warm walnut.&#; And while white is still the most popular choice for monotones, blue is making significant inroads. About a quarter of island cabinets are now blue, they say. But texture is paramount and, according to REHAU, &#;if there is a way to make a cabinet stand out with texture, brands are offering it and designers are swooning.&#;
Over the years, the processes involved in working with laminates and edge banding have changed as much as their appearance, with advances such as water-based adhesives and CNC automation. The explosion in laminate flooring has changed many parameters, but there are still some basics to keep in mind when working with these materials.
Frama-Tech carries more than 40 brands of edge banding in thousands of colors.
Courtesy of Frama-Tech
Making layered countertops and cabinet doors still requires balancing the panels to avoid warpage over time. Both the substrate and the plastic faces need to be warehoused in climate-controlled locations that avoid extremes of temperature or humidity, and both should be at equilibrium when used. Everything needs to be acclimated to the woodshop for a few weeks, so it doesn&#;t change shape or dimensions when the laminate is applied. Those parameters apply to the installation, too. For example, a shop might not want to install freshly made laminate and edgebanded doors on a jobsite that doesn&#;t have heat during the extremes of a northern winter. And if new cabinets are going to be exposed to direct sunlight (never a great idea), the customer might want to draw blinds or shades to protect them for a while.
As with most of the materials used in a woodshop, plastics expand and contract as they react to ambient conditions. Laminated doors, end panels and even countertops need to breathe a little. Confined panels may delaminate, warp or even split if they have nowhere to go. For solid wood frame construction, housing the panel edges in grooves has always been the traditional solution. Finding ways to include expansion joints in plastic laminated panels can be challenging in contemporary kitchens. One possible solution is to use overlay doors and fronts, rather than in-setting. Another is to outsource thermo-shaped, one-piece, MDF-core, five-part lookalike doors from a manufacturer who owns equipment beyond the reach of smaller shops. Larger suppliers can provide matching laminates so the rest of the kitchen can still be built in-house.
Nevamar wood grain HPLs from Distributor Service Inc. (DSI).
Courtesy of DSI
Choosing the right substrate is important, and finding less expensive options can be critical in the current inflationary cycle.
High- and medium-density fiberboards are remarkably consistent due to the lack of grain, fine particles, and high resin content. Some flake, strand, straw and chip boards are less reliable in both planes (they can expand and contract, but also warp), so they may be better choices for other manufacturing and building processes. Because of that lack of structure, some budget cores can bow over time when installed vertically, as in cabinet doors. And solid wood cores can be quite unstable across their grain, although they rarely move much in length.
Link to Lituo
Generally speaking, the more laminated layers in a plywood substrate, the more stable it will be. For example, a 13-layer, 3/4&#; thick sheet of multi-ply is less likely to cause problems when covered in plastic laminate and edgebanding than, say, a blockboard core. (Blockboard is a panel with a core of vertical grain softwood that is glued edge-to-edge and then sandwiched between veneers of poplar, hardwood or thin MDF that are applied under high pressure.)
One always needs to pay attention to how the substrate sheets were stored. Even Baltic birch multi-ply that was stored at a slight angle against a wall may be compromised. Sometimes, it&#;s a good idea to get out the winding sticks before optimizing. And it can also pay dividends to check how level a floor is before storing panels flat (horizontally). The shop may need to shim pallets to level, to avoid uneven settling.
The best way to store edge banding is horizontally (flat), so the rolls don&#;t oval out over time. If it&#;s pre-glued, the rolls should be separated so leaching doesn&#;t bind them together, especially in warmer weather. The ideal temperature is somewhere between 63 and 68 degrees F for most banding, but a few degrees in either direction won&#;t be too detrimental.
Edge banding should be stored out of direct sunlight and away from UV light that&#;s being generated by other processes. It should also be protected from dust and spray booth residue. Static-laden detritus build-up can attach to the back of the band, which can then telegraph through an installed edge and cause bumps.
Whether banding should be pre-glued and ironed on or attached with a gluepot on an edgebander is usually a question of volume. Small builders and repair shops may only occasionally use edge banding, so the iron-on melamine choice makes more sense there. It&#;s a good idea to use a rag between the iron and PVC banding, so it doesn&#;t melt. PVC is less expensive than ABS, but the latter is recyclable. Shops cutting larger volumes of casework parts on CNCs are perhaps best served by adding a dedicated edgebander, as it&#;s quicker and the results are more predictable. There are relatively inexpensive options here, including portable units and lower levels of automation.
The most common mistakes by new edgebander owners are overfilling the pot or forgetting to shut off the heat. Overfilling leads to waste, while minimal filling means that the glue stays fresher as it needs to be topped up frequently. If the pot doesn&#;t have a timer that shuts it off when not in use, think about adding one to extend the glue&#;s useful life. And keep in mind that edge banding is a sticky, messy process no matter how advanced the machine is, so routine maintenance and clean-up are essential. Chains need oiling, pots need cleaning, bearings need lubing, and guillotine blades can be treated with a coating to reduce build-up. Plus, adjustments need to be made so panels get as close as possible to the glue rollers without touching them. That&#;s a matter of trial and error.
There are several different types of laminate and edge banding, including melamine (low pressure laminate, or LPL), which is so named because the process used to make it doesn&#;t use very high pressure. The name has nothing to do with how much pressure it can withstand in ordinary use. Melamine most often comes already attached to a substrate as it doesn&#;t have much integrity as a sheet. Think of it as a thick decorative paper sealed in resin. Some manufacturers refer to LPL as thermally-fused melamine (TFM) or thermally-fused laminate (TFL).
The most common material in horizontal applications is high-pressure laminate (HPL), and the machine that makes it applies about five times more pressure than a melamine press. HPL is a more expensive option because it has a &#;plastic&#; backing behind the decorative paper, and tougher coatings. It&#;s less susceptible to wear and impact, so it tends to make good countertops. It also comes in more colors and patterns, and these are fused onto several sheets of kraft paper (usually between 5 and 9) that has been soaked in resin.
Heat and that high pressure are used to fuse those layers together and create the familiar thin plastic sheets. HPL can be bent a little (sometimes it has a mesh built in) to conform to curves, and special postforming HPL is a little thinner than the thickest normal sheet stock. The thickness (how many layers of paper) and brittleness of the material (which can depend on the resins) will determine the smallest comfortable radius for bending, so sometimes shops need to experiment with both edge banding and sheets on tight curves. And because of its thermal forming, the top surface of HPL can feature wood grain and other textures. Tactile surfaces can be molded into the face, so fingers can physically feel the grain. That top layer in the sandwich is also loaded with resins that can resist pretty good levels of shock, heat and abrasion. Some manufacturers still say that melamine wood grain can look more realistic than HPL, but nowadays that may be just semantics. Things have come a long way over the last decade, in both arenas.
Most shops use the same HPL as a backer, but manufacturers do supply slightly thinner, less colorful, less expensive backers, including regrinds. Those are leftovers that have had their decorative layer sanded off, so they have a homogonous appearance and good adhesion.
HPL is easy to maintain and stands up well to cleaning fluids, so it&#;s the product of choice for projects such as labs, clinics, hospitals and schools. It doesn&#;t do so well with hot items such as pots and pans that are being removed directly from a stovetop. It can also be imbued with special characteristics such as fire rating, or the ability to tolerate certain chemicals. It can be treated to handle static electric build-up, and different grades can be used vertically or horizontally. In fact, laminate is so versatile that a shop can present the designer&#;s specs and the intended application to a knowledgeable laminate supplier, and then be open to suggestions as to how the clients&#; needs can best be served.
This article was originally published in the June issue.
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