Artificial boards are made of wood or other non-wood plants. After being separated into various unit materials through certain mechanical processing, they are glued together with or without adhesives and other additives to form boards or molded products. They mainly include three categories of products: plywood, particleboard and fiberboard, and there are hundreds of extended products and deep-processed products. Among plywood, particleboard and fiberboard, plywood has the best strength and volume stability, and its processing performance is also better than particleboard and fiberboard, so it is the most widely used. Hardboard has the advantage of no glue or less glue, but environmental pollution is a serious problem in the fiberboard industry. The manufacturing process of particleboard is the simplest and consumes the least energy, but a large amount of adhesive is required.
The advantages of artificial boards are: large format, good structure, easy construction; low expansion and contraction rate, stable size, more uniform material than sawn timber, not easy to deform and crack; veneer and various scraps as raw materials of artificial boards are easy to impregnate, so they can be treated with various functionalities (such as flame retardant, anti-corrosion, shrinkage resistance, wear resistance, etc.); wide range of thickness and density levels, strong applicability; better bending and forming performance than sawn timber. The disadvantages of artificial boards are that the glue layer will age, the long-term load-bearing capacity is poor, the service life is much shorter than sawn timber, and the bending and tensile strengths are inferior to sawn timber. However, due to the shortage of wood, artificial boards are used to replace many traditional uses of sawn timber, and their production has also increased rapidly.
Compared with traditional natural wood, it is cheap and usually uses the leftovers of wood, which saves a lot of wood resources and realizes the recycling of waste resources. In addition, due to its production process, it overcomes the characteristics of traditional wood that is susceptible to moisture and is not easy to deform. Due to its many advantages, it has brought benefits to the field of interior decoration and promoted the development of related fields. With the improvement of living standards, the demand for interior decoration styles has also tended to be diversified and pursue individuality. Different from the single decoration style pursued in the past, the aesthetic level of residents for interior decoration has also changed. Therefore, the research on artificial board products in the field of interior decoration is of great significance.
Application of artificial board products in interior decoration
As an important material in interior decoration, artificial board has a wide range of uses. It can be said that there are artificial boards in every corner of the room, such as the ceiling of the house, the indoor TV wall, the wall skirt, the floor, the door and window, etc. There are many varieties of common artificial boards on the market, mainly plywood, particle board, fiberboard and veneer artificial board.
In the modern market economy, more and more people are beginning to choose whole-house customization as the first choice for interior decoration. Artificial boards have begun to replace not only wood, but also bricks. Now, except for the partition walls of kitchens and bathrooms, the remaining walls are basically separated by artificial boards, such as TV background walls and decorative walls. Its main purpose as a wall is to bear hanging heavy objects.
As people pay more attention to health and environmental protection, people’s requirements for artificial boards in interior decoration have also begun to increase, requiring environmental protection and reaching the standard of zero formaldehyde. Now, people’s requirements for the quality, color and performance of artificial boards are getting higher and higher. The decoration can be divided into high, medium and low grades. The most important requirement for low-grade decoration is cost performance, followed by environmental protection; medium-grade decoration pays more attention to environmental protection, and secondly, there will be more requirements for the color of artificial boards, and they are required to be as close as possible to the overall style of the house; high-end decoration has the highest requirements for artificial boards. In addition to color and environmental protection factors, it requires the use of solid board cores. High-end decoration usually chooses to use paint-free decorative panels as cabinets, and the cabinet doors are customized by famous brand manufacturers. Of course, due to the relatively high replacement frequency of artificial boards, its beauty and durability are lower than the requirements of home decoration.
Fiberboard is also a kind of man-made board. The characteristics of fiberboard are compact and uniform structure, stable performance and good processability. It is suitable for sawing, planing, drilling, carving and other operations. Fiberboard products are often used to make lattices, panel furniture and wooden floor substrates in interior decoration.
Blockboard is used as a base board in interior decoration due to its good nail-holding ability, strong load-bearing capacity and high strength. Its main uses are internal partitions of indoor furniture, drawer boards and door and window materials.
Demand for man-made board products in interior decoration
Specifications and sizes
Format size
The size of man-made boards in my country’s building materials market is mainly 1220mm×2440mm. However, with the development of the market economy, the development demand for interior decoration has become diversified, and the demand for the size of man-made boards has also become diversified. For example, man-made boards of 1220mm×2440mm are inconvenient to transport due to their large size and high transportation costs, and a large amount of waste is likely to occur during transportation. Therefore, the demand for the size of man-made boards by modern man-made board companies has also become diversified. In addition to 1220mm×2440mm, they can also be customized. For example, the size of man-made boards in indoor furniture cabinets is usually 530mm×550mm×600mm. In addition, the factory will also uniformly seal the edges of the man-made boards, which can improve their aesthetics and reduce labor waste. For example, in order to meet the actual conditions of modern houses, man-made boards are usually designed to be 800mm×2800mm and 600mm×2600mm for use as wall panels. These size-flexible panels are increasingly used in modern house designs.
Thickness
In modern interior design, the thickness of artificial boards will be adjusted according to the actual situation of the house. Generally, the thickness of partition walls is 9mm to 25mm, the thickness of cabinet partitions is 18mm to 25mm, the thickness of back panels is 3mm, and the thickness of long desks or partitions with dark lights is generally 40mm to 60mm.
Surface quality
For the decoration industry, meticulous operation and exquisite craftsmanship are required, especially in the decoration process of artificial boards. Even if there is only a slight crack on the edge of the product during sawing, it will cause defects in the product and affect the beauty of the product. In the decoration process, there are two main reasons for these problems. On the one hand, the surface of the raw material substrate is defective, and on the other hand, the decoration process is unreasonable. In this regard, enterprises should focus on the above two points, or increase the control of the quality of the raw material substrate, or improve the process of finishing.
For the vast majority of enterprises in my country, it is generally difficult to achieve complete color difference in the production of artificial boards, especially for artificial boards that are not in the same time period and batches. The main reason for this problem is impregnated film paper, which ultimately leads to color difference problems in the finished board. In this regard, manufacturers have increased their research on impregnated film paper, trying to overcome this difficulty, strictly control the color difference of products, and ensure the beauty and consistency of products.
Physical and mechanical properties
In order to ensure the aesthetics of interior decoration products, artificial board products (such as plywood, blockboard, fiberboard, particleboard and veneer artificial board mentioned above) must meet certain physical and chemical performance indicators to ensure the durability of the products. According to consumers, artificial boards used for load-bearing or as inner partitions of indoor furniture are good in the short term, but are prone to deformation in the long term. In this regard, companies should pay attention to after-sales feedback on artificial board products and make improvements to the problems and suggestions raised by users, such as improving the creep properties of easily deformed partitions, so as to improve the stability of artificial boards and maintain the beauty and durability of products.
Moisture-proof and mildew-proof function
Since artificial boards often become moldy and swell after being exposed to moisture, especially artificial boards in bathrooms and kitchens, which are more easily deformed than other boards, the appearance of the product changes, thus affecting the decorative effect of interior decoration. For users in coastal cities, due to the influence of local weather, the demand for moisture-proof, mildew-proof and deformation-proof artificial boards is greater than that of inland residents. Therefore, manufacturers should expand the market, enrich the products of artificial boards, and expand the production of moisture-proof and mildew-proof artificial boards in coastal areas.