Question
Is there anyone else having trouble with Jowat clear edgebander adhesive?
Forum Responses
(Adhesive Forum)
From Jeff Pitcher, forum technical advisor:
I would look a lot more closely at your equipment before jumping to the conclusion that it's a glue issue. The Jowat unfilled glue works very well and it's highly unlikely that it would be causing any problems.
Edge material over the three years has included single layer tape .5 mm., paper back, fleece back, 1 mm, 3 mm, 7/8", 1", EdgeIt, EdgeCo, and one other I can't remember. We've used PVC, we've done the clear tape to check the spread. We've done this on veneer core, MDF core, particleboard core, and the MDF-veneer core combo.
One of our early suspects was the ambient temperature of the shop and thus the overnight temp of parts left, especially during winter nights, so we got a heater and made sure the parts were at least at spring time (70-80s) before we banded. Glue temp has been adjusted to allow open time to compensate for the possibility that we were losing too much heat at some point. We've heated the guide rail before starting so it would suck any heat out of the part before the glue was applied, although the glue rep said that wasn't necessary for us in our situation.
All of the parts are hand fed into the machine at the speed recommended in the tech manual and the glue pot temp has been checked repeatedly both at the feed roller and at the heating irons inside the pot.
We have even run extra material and left it sitting around various places in our shop, and on our parts racks, some for two years now, and what's amazing is that after running the parts, checking for "flappers" and being satisfied that the edgebanding is sufficiently secured, and actually having it checked by the tech from our service company, now, after all this time, from time to time lying on the floor will be a piece of the edgebanding, or we'll notice that an edge has turned loose.
In the beginning, especially, we didn't care what the problem was - we were willing to relook our technique in all phases of the parts processing and rethink the order and even the machinery we use.
We even bought a Holtzer panel saw (1265) in order to get consistent cuts. We learned that even MDF core plywood will give you serious banana cuts and have learned to use dust cuts to eliminate those. We learned that on dust cuts, the blade will torque or twist if you don't cut off enough material and have adjusted our optimizer to allow for those. Everything and more that you have suggested was cured or eliminated as suspects during most of the first year.
We are a small shop but for us, two to three million in cabinets is a lot of liability standing out there waiting to fall apart. Believe me, we wished that it was something as simple as an out of square cut or the glue was too cold or the parts were too cold or dusty on the edge.
One thing I want to make clear: in the case of the banding failing to stay, this all happened long after initial application and, in fact, in most cases, after the cabinets had been installed for nearly a year. Specifically, we used three different bandings, but probably from the same manufacturer. We had unfinished cherry two ply on paper at .5 mm., unfinished maple two ply and pre-finished maple and cherry, same everything.
What I noticed on the panels where the glue turned loose was that there was even coverage, and there was no glue stuck to the banding. The glue was always stuck to the panel rather than the banding.
We have since switched to a different brand of glue, unfilled, and the machine runs cleaner, less glue sling on the top and bottom trimmers, less glue slap on the end of the panel (as opposed to the leading edge) and less tags sticking to the end trimmers.
It was suggested at one point that we were not using enough glue and should turn up the doser, which we did and of course we ended up with lots of glue everywhere in the trimmer section of the bander. This was a total waste of glue and increased the work necessary to prepare the panels for assembly, and ultimately did not make a difference in whether or not the banding stayed glue. In the consideration of glue temp, there should be sufficient open time for the banding to be applied to the hot glue, if the bander is running at the proper speed and the parts are clean.
Jeff, to answer your question, yes, all the different bandings applied during that first year had failures. That's not to say that every piece on every panel failed, however - on one job where we got a call back, you could pick at the edge of the banding on almost any panel and peel it off intact without leaving any banding on the panel. The glue would look smooth and flat and evenly applied. Very weird.
I'm not sure what the sleeping slider is, but yes, all the cuts were fresh, clean, straight, and square.
You said: "on one job where we got a call back, you could pick at the edge of the banding on almost any panel, and peel it off intact without leaving any banding on the panel. The glue would look smooth and flat and evenly applied"
Could this be a backed edgeband and the backing has separated from the edgeband material? As I understand it, the edgeband glue works by mechanical adhesion. The glue actually gets pressed into all the tiny cracks and crevices of the two materials (edgeband and substrate). I would have to look at the edgeband backing to the glue area of the glue bond since this seems to be where the bond failure was.
Comment from contributor R:
We have an IDM AH4000 series and we are currently using Joewat 280 series glue. We recently completed a large project with 3mm solid VG fir edgebanding and had the same problem en masse.
