Woodworking adhesives – V-grooving, top laminating, general assembly
V-grooving
Beardow Adams has a range of hot melt adhesives for v-grooving. In cabinet manufacture, an angle joint can be created by removing a V shape cut across a sheet panel perpendicular to the length of the material. All the wood is removed leaving the flexible laminate veneer in place. Adhesive is jetted into the groove by hand gun or automatic systems.
By folding the panel at the V and closing the gap, an angle is created which is bonded in place by the adhesive. This technique is commonly used for wraparound drawer bodies and loudspeaker cabinets.
Beardow Adams recommended hot melts have the following important benefits: low viscosity, good wetting and no squeeze out.
Top laminating
Recent machine developments have allowed the move to hot melt to laminate materials to the face of a board as a separate operation.
The laminate material may be wood veneers, high pressure laminates or impregnated papers and Beardow Adams hot melt adhesives have been at the forefront of this technology change.
Paper lamination is becoming popular in the USA and Europe. Typically, flat sheets (1.2 x 2.4 meters) of particleboard or MDF – medium density fibreboard – are coated with a thin layer (approximately 60 g/m²) of hot melt adhesive by hot roller in a continuous process and the paper brought into contact with the adhesive.
Hot melt’s major advantages over traditional water based PVAc (polyvinyl acetate) adhesives are:
- Speed of production
- Better finish as the water in the emulsion of PVAc adhesives can cause boards to swell. Not so with hot melts
High performance worktops require a more substantial laminate, such as high pressure laminates (HPL), but this does place demands on the adhesive bond.
Hot melts major advantages over traditional urea-formaldehyde or solvent based adhesive are:
- Speed of production
- Save total costs
Other general assembly
Beardow Adams has experience of many other associated application in woodworking and cabinet making where hot melt adheives are used to bond a wide variety of different surfaces to each other.
Return to main woodworking page
|