Design Solutions - Spring 2013 - (Page 47)

Author’s Note: The author wishes to thank 10-year AWI Member Firm ABET Laminati for contributing to this article. A Century of Laminate. By Greg Heuer, CSI AWI Chief Learning Officer t he pace of change since 2000 has been astounding. Look around your office and home. Think of the number of things you use every day which didn’t exist as we entered the 21st Century. The first 20 years of the previous century saw great innovation, too. The automobile and truck replaced the carriage and wagon. The era of manned flight took off, and . . .Plastic Laminate was invented which made a significant impact on the architectural woodwork industry. inVention and improVement Two men working at Westinghouse came up with a substitute for the natural mica mineral used as electrical insulation. Herbert Faber and Dan O’Conor coated fabric with a thermosetting resin which cured under heat and pressure. By 1913 they had applied for a patent on the process and product. Because it was being used for (in place of) mica (the mineral), they called it formica. They left Westinghouse, creating their own company, the Formica Insulating Company, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The product insulated the coils in radios, and soon was used to make the bodies of the radios themselves. To this day the product standards for laminate are set by the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) (www.nema.org) in its document commonly called LD3. The phenolic-fabric product was so durable that it was also used for drive plates and gears in the 1920-30s. By 1927 Faber and O’Conor had added decorative colors and patterns to the top layer of the laminate, simulating marble and wood grain. The process of improving the simple insulator from industrial use to commercial use as a high pressure decorative laminate (HPDL) had begun. They switched their base material from fabric to layers of brown kraft paper, the kind used in the manufacture of paper grocery store bags. The paper layers are soaked in dark phenolic resin before being combined with the decorative layer and the clear protective layer. Those top two layers are impregnated with a clear melamine resin. This is the way most common HPDL is made today. Laminate is manufactured one sheet at a time, with the many layers brought together just outside the press, slipped in with the pressure plate on top, and subjected to high pressure and heat. spring 2013 I designsolutions 47 http://www.nema.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Design Solutions - Spring 2013

Design Solutions - Spring 2013
Contents
Cornerstone
High Pressure Decorative Laminate
Office of Ovangkol
Design Flies High
A Captivating Kitchen
Design Scores Big
A Century of Laminate
Product Showcase
AWI Manufacturing Members
Ad Index
AWI Supplier Members

Design Solutions - Spring 2013