This weekend I was thinking about how to make various kinds of cupboards, wardrobes, etc with an MPCNC or Lowrider. With a CNC it’s easy to make everything perfectly to size. You can drill all the holes for planks, hinges, etc. It would also be quite straightforward to make drawers.
You can buy full sheet MDF or chipboard that already has a nice veneer layer on both sides (either melamine or a thin layer of real wood, in all kinds of colors and quality). However, when you cut out planks, the edges will not have any veneer. For interior edges that’s ok, but exterior edges will be very ugly. So you can use “edging”: a thin strip of veneer that you glue onto the edges.
A professional machine for this is very expensive. Even a handtool from Festool is $3,000. The edge banding machine applies hot glue in thin stripes to the edge band, and you press the edge band against the edge to fix it in place.
Of course I could do all that manually if I only build one small cupboard. But that wouldn’t be any fun
So is there something like “the MPCNC of edge banding”?
Just thinking out loud (and not very deeply), a 3D printer hotend might be able to apply the hot glue, and a motion platform similar to the MPCNC/Lowrider could apply the edge band. I’m sure it won’t be that easy though.
They make edge banding with the adhesive, and slightly oversized. You just use an iron to stick it on and then there are trimmers for trimming it flush.
I have used the iron on stuff and it is super easy to use and works great. A fresh razor blade after it is stuck to trim it and it is solid, or you can use a tiny chamfer on a router to make it super slick.
Yeah I guess I was overthinking it. Using edge banding that already has adhesive does make a lot more sense. Though now I’m thinking about using a 3D printer heater block as the iron…
Just in case anyone was wondering, using a 3D printer hotend totally works!
I wired up an old hotend to the RAMPS of my MPCNC, heated it to 200 degrees C, and pressed the heater block against some pre-glued edge banding with one of the flat sides. (I simply held the hotend in one hand and a small piece of MDF in the other). You just need to hold it on there for 1 or 2 seconds and the glue will melt already. If you apply a bit of pressure when it’s cooling down (takes 5-10 seconds or so) it will be glued on very strongly.
I will not be building any kind of machine for this, but it was fun to see it work.
