6. Soft-forming

Soft-forming is a technique for gluing more or less flexible edgebands, usually made of plastic, to panels with profiled edges: rounded or molded. In this case, the edges must perfectly match the curves of the panel edges.

Two types of glue can be used:

• hot melt adhesives, which, thanks to their strong and immediate setting as soon as they cool, can maintain relatively flexible edges on panels with rounded/profiled edges;

• or water-based vinyl dispersion/emulsion glues (white glues); in these cases, to achieve immediate, powerful setting, the water in the glue must be pre-dried and the glue reactivated by heat, using the double-gluing technique (gluing the edges of the panels together).

Figure