Composite Materials

For most cabinet jobs, off the shelf materials suit us well…3/4” Prefinished Hard Rock Maple, ¾” White Melamine, 13/16” Rift Cut White Oak…for example.  Sourcing these materials from our material vendors is usually as easy as placing an order with the vendor.

However, there are some materials that might give us cause for serious head scratching.

Let’s say, for example, this HPL kitchen is spec’d for a custom laminate for the casework exterior and yet another custom laminate for the doors.

Let’s have a look at the spec sheet…

Cabinet Exterior - PL2 - Nevamar Graphite Blue S3023-T Vertical Grade

Exterior Edge Banding - EB1 - Nevamar Graphite Blue S3023-T 1mm PVC

Cabinet Interior PL3 - Wilsonart Frosty White 1573-60 Vertical Grade

Interior Edge Banding - EB2 - White PVC - 1mm

Slab Doors Exterior - PL1 - Formica Weathered Fiberboard 8914 SKU: FO-8914-NG 4x8 VT

Slab Door Edge Banding - EB3 - Same as PL1 ( Laminate Slitter ) 

Slab Door Interior - PL3 - Wilsonart Frosty White 1573-60 Vertical Grade

How many different ways can we plan for this job and which one is the “best” way for us to do this in our shop?

Considerations are:

• How many unique laminate material specifications are there for this job? 

In other words and for example let’s say we have ¾” MDF core doors with vertical grade, grained, laminate ( PL2 ) on the exterior side and vertical grade white laminate on the interior ( PL3 ).  And the cases are frameless ¾” laminates sandwiching MDF cores with applied doors as finished ends .  They are ¾” MDF with vertical grade laminate exterior ( PL1) as applied doors on both sides.  And the interior of the cases are plain white melamine.

• What will the material schedules look like?

Will we call out “pseudo materials” and generic materials or will we be very specific using brand name SKUs and naming conventions?

• Are we going to buy materials already laid up….pre laminated or will we lay up all the laminated panel stock materials ourselves?

• Plan A - Pre laid up materials
  • How do we manage? 
• Plan B - Lay up the materials ourselves in our shop
  • How do we manage? 

Make a panel stock materials study.  

With all these questions, I can’t keep it all straight in my head so I’m going to make a “Materials Study” in Cabinet Vision.   What do I hope to accomplish with a Materials Study? I want to 

1. be certain that I have identified all the unique panel stock materials needed for this job. 
2. Be certain that I have all the materials in the Materials Manager for this job and 
3. I need to be certain I have all the materials schedules properly built out for this job and 
4. I need to be certain that the purchasing department will order all the necessary materials and quantities of materials correctly for this job.

Steps to make a materials study:

1. In the Materials manager, ensure that all pseudo materials exist so that they can be selected to use in the Materials Schedule manager.   In this case, we’ll need various combinations of PL1, PL2, and PL3…single sided, double sided and mixed sides.

Opener

I have a laminate job coming up.  The specs call for PL1, PL2 and PL3 and I gotta figure out how I’m going to manage the materials in terms of cost and in terms of buying prelaminated panels or making the panel stock by laying up the panels in-house....what that means to material management in Cabinet Vision and what that means to sending those materials to the CNC.

To help me figure this out, I generally make what I call a “Materials Study”.  I’ll demonstrate how I make a Materials study and why I do that, and secondly, I’m going to demonstrate how to use composite materials and finally I’m going to discuss the pros and cons of using composite materials for this job.   That’s what’s happening today on this episode of A Cabinet Vision Minute.