When it comes to the interiors of your home one of the main things that you are thinking about is post forming vs edge banding. The term post forming basically means something that has been formed after it has been laminated. This lamination can happen on plywood or any other substrate for that matter. Post forming is basically a process where laminates are applied on a surface such as plywood or MDF (Medium Density Fibreboard). In fact, post forming can be done on any surface that has edges that are specially formed. After this, the laminate can be rolled over the edges.
The purpose of post forming:
This is done in order to create a laminate that is single and unbroken. In these cases, the post formed edges are not sharp at all. In fact, they have a nice and rounded finish. Normally, the companies that manufacture such products press the laminates in a manual manner. They normally take the plywood pieces to the factories so that they can be post formed. The thing with a post formed finish is that it costs a bit more than what a regular finish would cost you. In these cases, normally the laminate is bent so that the post formed surface can be created.
Edge banding:
Normally, when plywood is cut it has a raw edge of sorts. If you do not cover the raw edge it will look bad at the very least. Apart from that it would also lead to scratches. This way, there is also a good chance that moisture can seep in the plywood and this would make the plywood lumpy or warp. In these cases, the raw edges are normally covered by using edge band, which is basically a narrow strip of material.
Some more information in this regard:
The thickness of this edge band is normally 0.5 mm at the least and 2 mm at the most. Of course, you should expect some variation in the prices. Normally the price of the thickest bands, the ones with a thickness of 2 mm, is around 3 to 4 times higher than the thinnest ones, which have a thickness of 0.5 mm. In fact, Wikipedia says that the term edge band denotes the process used to cover the aforementioned edges. As has been implied already, the main purpose here is to make sure that the edges of the laminate ply look good and are durable as well.
Normally, if you post form the laminate you do not need to use this. It is used to cover the edges that have not been post formed.This gives the laminate an appearance that is better from an overall point of view.
The different kinds of edge banding:
There are many 3 types of edge banding. These are manual, semi manual, and through fit. As the name would suggest, in case the edge band is pressed in a manual way over the edges. This normally happens when the work is being done onsite.
