Ecological Board, Multi-Layer Board, Particle Board, Density Board. The Strongest Analysis, Worth Collecting!

Interior Design Alliance

©Project: An Urban Cottage Urban Vacation Home Photography by Wen Studio

In the decoration circle, there is a topic that is widely discussed: how to choose the plate of custom furniture for the whole house? Especially now in this market, a variety of concepts fly from the mouth of the sales, and the average design novice has long been confused. The ecological board is solid wood? Solid wood multi-layer board must be better than particle board? Is it true that there is no aldehyde board? Why are imported panels expensive?

Today, give the partners to do the summary, so that the partners on the “whole house custom furniture used panels” have a summary of the cognitive. Mainly contains the following 4 parts.

1. What are the types of panels?
2. What is the practice of glue and edge sealing?
3. How to define environmental protection?
4. What are the brands of panels?

01.

Types of panels

©Project: An Urban Cottage Urban Vacation House Photo: Wen Studio

Suppose there is a log, if we use it to make furniture, we have to cut it into boards and squares of a certain size, called sawn timber. The carpenter gets the sawn timber, turns them into furniture parts, such as table legs, mortise and tenon components, and then puts them together, paints the outside, and makes the log furniture.

But the width of many desktops is larger than the width of the sawn lumber, and only a few boards can be put together with the glue. This gives rise to the most elementary board – logs straight patchwork board. Generally, by default it is logs, not considered artificial board.

But some short-diameter species, or too soft fast-growing wood, rubber wood pine fir and so on, and their wood cut out is too narrow and too weak to use, how to do? We can’t take them all for firewood.

Continue to put it together! Small strips of wood into large planks become integrated lumber. The commonly integrated lumber is the small strips of wood to open mortise and tenon, tooth jointed together. Thus, the tooth joint board (finger joint board) was born. This is a transitional product between the original wood and man-made board, both sides can rub a little edge. Improve the low-end solid wood easy to warp, deformation, cracking part of the wood, but the physical properties are still very worrying, the appearance of a difficult to say. More critically, many low-end furniture is willing to use to play solid wood gimmick, but will be painted with poor quality paint, the results instead affect the environmental protection.

▲Finger-joint board

The plywood with a solid wood core is made by applying a layer of wood veneer to the outside of two layers of integrated wood.  This is also the most familiar core board (joinery).

If you paste melamine finish paper, then it becomes the mouth of the sales of the paint-free board, ecological board, Malacca board. The advantages are strong nail strength, low moisture content, easy processing, the disadvantage is afraid of moisture, vertical bending strength is poor. However, the current automated factory processing cabinet has become the mainstream, and the core board is now only woodworking master more fond of.

▲Big core board

The strength of splicing is not enough?

Then change the idea. Spin-cut the low-end wood layer by layer to become wood chips. Then pressed together with glue, just like wafer cookies. Then put a finish on it, and you have multi-layer boards. The strength was greatly improved and it was adapted to automated factory processing, and it was all the rage. Multi-layer board has a very prominent advantage: good water resistance, so it is the first choice for making cabinets. Some sales call it solid wood multi-layer board, but in fact, it is also with glue.

▲Multi-layer board

When raw wood is processed and sawn, it produces a lot of offcuts, which are made into shavings. The high-pressure glue will put it together and then paste the veneer, which becomes particleboard. It is now commonly called particleboard.

Since the offcuts can be used, tree branches, recycled furniture, and even straw can also be used (Wanhua Harvest Board). This will not waste anything.

Of course, there are big brands of particleboard that will use the same raw material to produce, so that the stability is high. Particleboard is the best overall performance of the board, whether it is strength, easy automatic processability, grip nail strength, environmental control difficulty, it is almost no obvious shortcomings. And it is the low cost of production, so it is the mainstream of the current custom use of panels, especially the absolute mainstream of imported panels. There is also a strength upgrade version of particleboard, called oriented strand board, also known as European pine board / OSB board. It has the strongest physical properties in man-made panels, and is generally used for ceiling keel, window boxes, door frames, wall panels and even building walls. In terms of glue, many people will say that particleboard uses more glue than large core board multi-layer board. How is this environmentally friendly?  This topic the third paragraph to speak.

But the particle board is not all-purpose, can not be used to do a variety of shapes.

What can do modeling is density board. It is wood or a variety of plant fibers made of chips, add glue and press together, and then paste the finish. The Density board is guaranteed to be absolutely flat. It can be processed into a variety of modeling door panels, covered with PVC film to become molded panels / plastic-absorbing panels, and can also be made into a great feel of PET panels, UV panels.

If you want to do American rustic style, all kinds of light luxury style, it is necessary to participate in this kind of special finish density board. For density board, if the density is very large, called high-density fiberboard. This is the laminate flooring laid on the ground.  The disadvantages of density board are more obvious. It is more difficult to control environmental protection, but also particularly not moisture-proof. But the difficult density board can also do a very high environmental protection grade.

 ▲Plate comparison

02.

Gluing and edge sealing

The main source of air pollutant volatilization from the panels is glue, which has to be explained properly. The traditional glue used in the production of panels is tri-formaldehyde glue – urea-formaldehyde resin glue, phenol-formaldehyde resin glue, melamine resin glue.

The synthesis of tri-formaldehyde glue requires the use of formaldehyde, and it is a reversible reaction. So in the right environment (high temperature and high humidity), this chemical reaction will be reversed and the glue decomposes into formaldehyde.

Many people have a misconception that particle board with a large amount of glue is the least environmentally friendly. In fact, most of the glue is squeezed out under high pressure when the particleboard is produced. What is not environmentally friendly is a large amount of urea-formaldehyde resin glue used in order to reduce costs, and a large number of unknown small factory boards whose process control is also not working.

©Project: An Urban Cottage Urban Vacation House Photo: Wen Studio

Is there any glue without formaldehyde?

Yes, the most mature one is MDI glue (isocyanate), which does not contain formaldehyde groups in its composition. The application of MDI glue for imported panels has become more popular, but only in the past few years has it become popular in China. The domestic patent of MDI glue is Yantai Wanhua Group, the manufacturer of the straw production of grass board. Also because of this, most of the big brand customizers are looking for Wanhua OEM panels to improve environmental protection, claiming “no aldehyde” and “zero aldehydes”.

In fact, it is not really aldehyde-free, test it or something. Formaldehyde content is really not very high, and the use of MDI glue does not mean that all with MDI glue. The main obstacle to the promotion of domestic MDI glue is the price. The good board is piled up with the cost, there are raw material costs and research and development costs. Some boards are even several dozen RMB a piece. He dares to sell, do you dare to buy? There is also a claim of aldehyde-free soy glue. But its performance is a bit worse and still less mature.

© Project: Lunar Studio Restaurant Photo: Wen Studio

If you want to be environmentally friendly, glue is one side, and another side is edge sealing.

As the name implies, it is to seal the exposed substrate edge of the board with sealing tape (PVC or ABS sealing tape), so that formaldehyde can not run out.

Currently, there are three common edge sealing processes: EVA hot melt adhesive sealing, PUR hot melt adhesive sealing, laser edge sealing.

More than 90% of manufacturers are using EVA hot melt adhesive edge sealing. No advantages, no disadvantages, and it is cheap and affordable.  If the edge sealing machine is poor or process control is not good, after a few years the edge strip may buckle open.

PUR hot melt sealing was originally used in the printing industry, and it is relatively rare in the field of sheet sealing.  It is more expensive than EVA. It has the advantage of good waterproof, more resistant to high and low temperatures, sealing life longer than EVA.

Laser edge sealing is more expensive. Many customizers who claim to have laser edging actually have only one laser edging machine in 10 production lines. Generally, they are only used to seal the edges of the doors. Laser edge sealing is more recognizable because the edge is sealed, so you can hardly see the glue line, and the effect is beautiful.

When evaluating the quality of the cabinet, it depends on the sealing edge – whether the glue line is regular, obvious, sealing edge with thickness, all can be observed with the naked eye.

So, for particleboard, as long as the sealing edge is good, environmental protection can also be very high.

03.

Environmental standards of formaldehyde

Decoration air pollutants are TVOC, aromatic volatiles, and formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is actually a relatively small toxicity, why do people pay so much attention to it? Because the volatile cycle of the first two is short, so it is almost dissipated within a few months, while the volatile cycle of formaldehyde is up to 10 years or more, almost accompanying the material for life.

Therefore, adhere to ventilation is the most effective way to remove formaldehyde. Those methods of removing formaldehyde, formaldehyde companies do not work, IQ tax mostly.

When it comes to formaldehyde, there is a quite misleading description, that is, “colorless and tasteless”. The so-called colorless and tasteless is that it is very low in concentration. Because the volatile cycle of the first two is short, so it is almost dissipated within a few months, while the volatile cycle of formaldehyde is up to 10 years or more, almost accompanying the material for life.

Formaldehyde is actually a colorless, but irritating gas. Formalin, which everyone should have heard of, is an aqueous solution to formaldehyde. Want to experience the smell of formaldehyde, go and smell formalin will know.

© Image source: dinzd.com

China’s standard for formaldehyde emission from man-made boards is E1 ≤ 0.124mg/m³. However, this standard is not high and can be easily reached. Most domestic panel mills will set their own standards to show that they are more environmentally friendly than the national standard. This is also the origin of the domestic E0 grade.

In October 2021, the new national standard GB/T39600-2021 “formaldehyde emission classification of man-made boards and their products” will be implemented. The limited value of formaldehyde emission is graded as follows.

– E1≤0.124mg/m³

– E0≤0.05mg/m³

– ENF ≤ 0.025mg/m³

E1 against the European standard E1, E0 approximately against the European standard E-LE standard (abbreviation for lower release). The latter is also the current standard for most of the European imports of laminates. ENF is more demanding, numerically benchmarked against the Japanese F4 stars.

In this way, a variety of haphazard man-made boards on the market environmental rating can be unified.  Whether you are a domestic board or imported board, whether flooring or furniture board, as long as they are sold in China, they must be unified under the same formaldehyde emission limits framework.

04.

Panel brands

© Image source: dinzd.com Project: Framework Studio Home Office

Let’s start with imported brands.

We can come into contact with imported brands basically from Europe, including EGGER, KOREF, FENSA, FEDERATION, KNOXBOND, TROUBON and so on. They mainly focus on particleboard, and environmental protection level reached the European standard E-LE or even the Japanese standard F4 stars.

The biggest advantage of imported panels is the finish, which is clearly ahead of domestic panels. It is not only realistic in texture, but also realistic to the touch. Many customizers will be specially used for cabinet doors. More critical is that the domestic plate size of 1.2m x 2.44m, imported plates for 2.07m x 2.8m. If you want the cabinet door through the top high, and more than 2.4m, only imported plates can be achieved.

Do import plates of custom merchants are also better to find. You can directly turn to the official website of EGGER or Kronospan or the like, from the list of authorized dealers of each general agent to check the local business contacts.

Because of the cost, the big national brands have now gradually abandoned the use of imported panels. It should be noted that these imported panels are also particle boards, which are generally produced in Romanian factories in China, never as noble as the advertised “raw materials from the Alps, natural logs”.

© Project: Lunar Studio Restaurant Photo: Wen Studio

Domestic brands are cheaper than imported brands of panels, in fact, environmental protection and physical properties are truly not worse than foreign ones. The only disadvantage may be that the color research and development is not as good as others, but the winning product line, a wide variety. However, the domestic brand of counterfeit imitation is also more serious. Even if the real thing, because the domestic brands are supplying the base material (i.e., plain board), when they reach the hands of dealers, it is difficult to say who to find to paste the veneer.

The good thing is that the domestic brands have a very sound dealer system, many times you can go to the local general agent to take the board directly, and then find the factory processing, or specify the factory to take the goods from the general agent. The most famous place to do particleboard is Jilin Senkou Lushuihe and Daya, north and south, the fame is big, so there are many imitations.

© Project: Hangzhou Xilat Space Research Office Photo: He Chuan

Tubaobao, Millennium Boat, Moganshan, and other brands that have emerged in recent years have rich product lines, including large core boards, multi-layer boards, European pine boards, particle boards and finger-joint boards. But these brands are mainly good at multi-layer boards and large core boards. Generally, local small brand integrated home customizers, tend to choose famous brand boards to stand for themselves. The big national brands will look for manufacturers to customize.

Yantai Wanhua Chemical Group, for example, provides the flagship boards for most of the big brand customizers. This is because they have a patent for MDI glue, and they mainly do substrates for corporate customers. However, Wanhua does not appear in the market with its own name, but makes all kinds of names according to the needs of most of the big brands of whole-house customization that it OEMs, such as Kang X board, original X board, X net board, etc.

In fact, the big brand plates are quite good, each has its own advantages. What we want to do is to get a more appropriate price on the basis of ensuring the real thing. An appropriate product does not mean that the price should be very low. After all, cost and quality are positively correlated, so you should not fall into the trap of low price.