When to Use Wood grain PVC edge banding Supplier？

When you’re choosing your residence hall furniture and deciding on the specs, you’ll inevitably choose what materials you want.

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Should it be totally solid wood, including the top? Or should you get solid wood or plywood substrates with laminate tops, or all laminate?

Whatever the selection, your furniture is likely to include edge banding. Why? Because it’s an integral part of the construction. Depending on where it’s used in the cabinet, edge banding can significantly extend the longevity of your furniture.

In this short guide, part of our Nuts & Bolts Series for operational and facilities leaders, you’ll learn some of the basics of edge banding.

What is Edge Banding?

Let’s start from the beginning. What is edge banding? It’s actually quite simple. Plywood, particle board, and other manufactured wood cores like MDF have rough, unfinished, unprotected, and generally unsightly edges. To address this, innovative technologies have been developed to glue different bands of glossy finished material to these rough edges to match the tops and sides.

These narrow bands or strips, called edging tape, range in thickness from 0.018-inch to 5mm and come in 250 ft rolls. Thicker edging is used in high traffic and commercial environments because it provides greater resilience and impact resistance.

Edge banders are industrial-grade machines that apply the edging tape to the raw edges of wood panels using hot-melt adhesive or glue.

The Purpose of Edge Banding

Edge banding serves both functional and aesthetic purposes. Functionally, edge bands perform key duties for your furniture. First, they keep moisture out, acting as de facto seals on the edge of the core material. Second, edge banding enhances durability and resilience by providing impact resistance. Solid wood edging can also add to the overall strength of the furniture.

Aesthetically, edge banding covers unsightly rough edges and creates a glossy finish to match your tops and sides. You can even create radial edges to soften sharp angles.

Applications of Edge Banding

Where can you expect to find edge banding in your furniture? This depends on your overall material specification. A solid wood product won’t include any edge banding except where solid wood can't be used. For example, wardrobe doors are often made of veneer core plywood or MDF.

Even when solid wood is used for case sides and drawer fronts, many customers still use high-pressure laminate tops, which require edge banding. If you’re using plywood or laminate as your material specification, that needs edge banding too.

Edge banding is even used in unexpected places like plywood bed decks to create a fully sealed deck that prevents bed bugs.

Materials Used in Edge Banding

PVC

PVC is the most popular material for edge banding on case good tops. It’s inexpensive, durable, and boasts a long life. PVC doesn’t require any finishing process and is easy, albeit tedious, to repair. However, it’s not recyclable and doesn’t biodegrade. ABS (Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) is an eco-friendly alternative to PVC as it’s both recyclable and safe to incinerate.

Solid Wood

Solid Wood is still a favorite for many woodworking camps, known for its durability, recyclability, and ease of repair. It’s more resistant to chipping than veneer edge tape and provides additional dimensional support to plywood and MDF. However, it’s more difficult to use for curves.

Wood Veneer

Wood Veneer is commonly used for plywood cabinet sides, drawer fronts, and MDF wardrobe doors. Made from thin slices of wood like oak, maple, ash, and walnut, it provides a clean solid-wood look and is pre-sanded to absorb stains and finishes.

How Edge Banding is Applied

Edge banding can be applied using several methods, including:

• Hot-melt glue
• Hot air/laser
• Iron-on
• Laser edging

Peeling Issues

Improper application of edge banding can result in peeling if the adhesive fails or if the furniture experiences rough use. For instance, .5mm edging doesn't provide much resistance to impact and is not recommended for front case sides. If your furniture starts to peel, we can fix it.

Cost Considerations

We generally recommend PVC edge banding for budget-conscious projects. Solid wood edge banding is more expensive due to the higher quality of materials and its labor-intensive nature.

Adhesives

We use hot melt glue for our adhesive solution because it provides an excellent seal. The ambient temperature plays an important role in this process; a warm environment ensures optimal adhesion.

Your Choices

While it’s our responsibility to edge band correctly, you still need to make informed choices when evaluating edge banding options. Our experts will help you navigate these choices to ensure you get the right product for your project.

Our goal is to help you understand the process and give you confidence in our products, designed based on years of manufacturing experience and field-tested performance.

Videos: Edge Banding Basics

Here is a simplified version of edge banding. When building furniture for higher education and military customers, we do this on an industrial scale. This video will help you visualize the process in its simplest form.

Lituo are exported all over the world and different industries with quality first. Our belief is to provide our customers with more and better high value-added products. Let's create a better future together.

If you enjoyed this article, you can check out the full Nuts & Bolts Series here.

Wood grain PVC edge banding Supplier