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A tour of one of Formica Corporation's manufacturing facilities is a must for people who are associated with Formica® brand products. A knowledge of how the product is made is helpful when it comes to understanding the product's qualities. This story will lead you on a step-by-step tour through the laminate manufacturing process.
In essence, Formica® brand laminate is made of two things: paper and resins. The papers are saturated with resins and dried, then stacked in layers and pressed under heat. In the press, the resin is cured under high pressure, and the separate layers of paper consolidate and form a single sheet of laminate.
If it seems it should be more complicated than that, it is.
For one thing, there are thousands of variations on the basic process, if only because Formica Corporation makes decorative laminate in thousands of combinations of grade, color, pattern, finish, texture and size. Each combination means a variation in one or more parts of the process.
The process is carefully controlled - not just any paper will do, nor will just any resin or any temperature in the press.
Doing it right demands very close attention to a great many little details.
RAW MATERIALS The process of making laminate begins with raw materials - phenolic and melamine resins, brown paper and high-grade print paper. Paper enters the plant by railcar or truck in huge rolls, that contain up to 22,000 linear feet of paper and weigh as much as two and one-half tons. Resins enter the plant by tank truck.
TREATING Following inspection, the paper is moved from receiving to the treating department. Treated papers are the materials from which laminate is made. The brown paper serves as a carrier for the plastic resin and lends reinforcing strength and thickness to the finished laminate. The high-grade paper is the decorative sheet - for example, a solid color, a printed pattern or a printed woodgrain.
The giant rolls of raw paper are loaded on a spindle at the "wet end" of the treater. After being dipped in a bath through a "treating" process that impregnates it with a resin, the paper - in one continuous ribbon - floats through the treater ovens to the "dry end," where it is cut into sheets.
Paper is treated with an amber colored phenolic resin; the high-grade surface papers are treated with a clear melamine resin. The melamine presses out clear and doesn't discolor.
Two methods are used to impregnate the paper with resin. The usual way (and the fastest and most efficient) is called "reverse-roll coating." In this process, The paper is drawn between two big rollers, one of which applies a thin coating of resin to one side of the paper. This thin coating is given time to soak through the paper as it passes through the drying oven.
The other process is called "dip and squeeze" and is just what it sounds like: the paper is drawn through a vat of resin, then passed through rollers that squeeze off the excess much the way an old-fashioned washing machine wringer squeezes excess water from a bedsheet.
Paper must be of uniform weight so that the finished product won't vary in thickness. It must be properly porous and absorbent so it will carry just the right amount of resin. The rollers in the treating machines must be the right distance apart - maintaining tolerances of less than one one-thousandth (1/1000) of an inch - and the resin of just the right consistency, so that the treated paper will carry the exact amount, very evenly spread, to avoid unevenness in the finished laminate.
Almost all of the filler paper is treated by the faster reverse-roll process, simply because it is more efficient and permits full coating with less resin and waste. The surface papers, however, are almost always treated by the dip-and-squeeze process. It's slower, but permits a heavier coating of the melamine resin, which makes the finished surface of Formica® brand laminate so durable and resistant to stains and heat.
COLLATION
The assembling of the buildups of treated material is done in the collating department.
The surface sheet of the laminate assembly - the sheet visible to the eye - is made of high-grade paper. This sheet is the decorative surface - it could be a solid color, woodgrain, pattern or any one of many beautiful offerings.
A topmost "overlay" sheet is placed over the decorative sheet and turns transparent when cured, giving depth and wear resistance to the finished laminate.
What the finished laminate looks like depends, mainly, on the surface paper. It's not unlike wallpaper. Some are solid colors and some are printed with patterned design including full-color, photo-reproductions of, say, woodgrain, granite or marble.
In laminate of light-hued solid colors, an extra sheet of fine, white paper is placed beneath the printed surface sheet. This prevents the amber-colored phenolic filler sheet from interfering with the lighter surface color.
PLATE
The texture of the laminate surface is determined by a plate that is inserted with the buildup into the press. A highly polished plate produces a glossy finish; if the end product is to have a matte finish, the plate is textured.
Formerly, textured paper between the plate and the laminate imparted the matte finish. The paper could be used just once, however. Now etched steel plates are used, giving a more consistent matte finish and eliminating the waste involved with texture paper.
PRESSING
The finished buildups are sent to the press room, where hundreds can be loaded into a press at one time. Each buildup (a pair of laminates) is separated from the next by a plate, usually made from 1/8-inch thick steel. This plate imparts the finish, such as matte or polished, to the laminate's surface.
In the press, hydraulic rams apply tremendous pressure to the resin-impregnated stacks - at least 800 pounds per square inch and sometimes as much as 1,500 pounds - and superheated water or steam flowing through jacketing built into the press raises the temperature to more than 250 degrees Fahrenheit.
It takes about an hour in the press for the resin to re-liquify, flow and cure, bonding the stack together into a single sheet of finished, decorative laminate.
In the press cycle, time and temperature are as important as the formulation of the resin. Heat applied too quickly can warp the product. Too much heat can make it brittle, or scorch and discolor it. Constant attention is paid to how hot the buildups get and how the heat permeates the laminate.
To complicate matters, the resin itself produces heat as it cures. The curing buildups in the presses are constantly monitored by tiny, heat-sending, thermo-couple wires.
TRIM AND SAND
Removed from the press, the newly formed sheets of laminate are separated and trimmed to finish size in the trim and sand department, on machines resembling big routers. They are then roughened by sanding of the reverse side so glue will stick when they're laid up by the customer during fabrication.
PROCESS VARIATIONS
Very simply put, that is the process. But, as stated earlier, the variations are almost endless and the details far more complicated. Much depends on which of the thousands of combinations of size, grade, texture, finish and color is being made.
Quality control is also crucial to making laminate that is always the same high quality - it's important that color, thickness, texture, finish and size don't vary.
The resins must be just the right mixture and consistency. The basic formula can vary in many ways. To meet and surpass the Underwriter's Laboratory Code for fire-retardant laminate, special papers containing fire-retardant additives are used. Fire-rated laminate is used in commercial application to meet local fire codes.
At every step, temperature is crucial. Too much heat in the drying oven (or too little solvent in the resin) causes the treated paper to lose solvents too quickly, and the laminate may not bond properly in the press. Too cool an oven (or the resin with too much volatile solvent) won't "flash" off the solvents enough, and the laminate may warp.
How the laminate will be used determines some manufacturing variables - the precise composition of the resin, thickness (or "grade") of the sheet, time, heat and pressure in the press. If the laminate is to be used as is (say, for a flat tabletop), the press cycle is formulated so that the resin will cure completely.
If the laminate is to be "postformed" (where laminate is wrapped on a curve), then it is thinner and the chemistry, time and temperature are adjusted so that the resin remains slightly uncured. The customer reheats the laminate during post forming and, in the process, finishes the curing cycle.
FACILITIES
In North America, the laminate manufacturing process described in this story is carried out in three Formica Corporation plants: Evendale, Ohio; Sierra, California; and Saint-Jean, Quebec.
Community
Environmental Commitment
Environmental Awareness
Formica Corporation is an environmentally responsible company that has active programs underway in all areas of environmental management. The following information summarizes the efforts of Formica Corporation in the areas of raw material management, solid waste management and air pollution control.
Raw Material Management: Formica Corporation uses stainless steel plates to impart surface on the majority of laminates it produces. This process replaced a paper release system, thereby saving thousands of trees per year and conserving the energy resources required to convert the trees into paper. In addition, by not using release paper, Formica Corporation has reduced the amount of scrap paper it sends to landfill by as much as 80,000 cubic yards per year. Formica Corporation uses water-based phenolic and melamine resins in the manufacturing process. The wood used in the manufacturing of Formica® brand laminate filler paper comes from non-rainforest timber. Formica Corporation has eliminated the use of heavy metals in its decorative papers.
Waste Management:
Laminate residues generated during the manufacturing process are burned in Formica Corporation power boilers. This significantly reduces the amount of solid waste sent to land-fills and reduces the use of nonrenewable fuels such as natural gas and coal. Formica Corporation composts 80 percent of the solid waste generated at its Ohio facility. Sample chips are recycled by Formica Corporation corporate and distributor sales representatives. All current items are recollated into new sample sets.
Air Pollution Controls:
Formica Corporation controls particulate emissions at all of its manufacturing facilities with control devices that operate at 99 percent efficiency. Formica Corporation has installed state-of-the-art equipment to control Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions at the Ohio and California facilities. Because of this equipment and ongoing projects, VOC emissions have steadily decreased over the last few years. In recent years, Formica Corporation has replaced solvent-based phenolic resins with water based phenolic resins, thereby greatly reducing VOC emissions. In summary, the management of Formica Corporation believes it is our responsibility to help preserve the environment. We will continue to make changes in all areas of our operation, wherever feasible, in support of this belief.
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