Black Bros. Co. again exhibited at the IWF Show for the 24th consecutive time. With a show every other year since 1970 Black Bros. has been an exhibitor at every one of them.
This year the IWF Show had very good attendance, which kept us busy in our booth during the show and afterwards with follow-up.
We displayed an abbreviated version of our Panel Express Line and were running live demonstrations actually applying adhesive and laminating two times per day. We had our recently re-designed 495 Panel Cleaner sweeping dust off the particleboard, our 775 top and bottom adhesive spreader applied adhesive to the top side, we manually laid up high pressure laminate (HPL), we then ran the laid up panel through the Panel Express Plus, which provided rotary nip pressure and IR heat. After the panels exited the Panel Express with temperatures from 160-180 degrees F, we waited for 2, 3, 4 & 5 minutes before we pulled a corner of the HPL from the particleboard. At two minutes we were getting a little fiber tear, but at five minutes we were getting very good fiber tear. More particleboard fibers were sticking to the HPL. This was proving that if the fiber tear was that good in five minutes, our customers could be routing, sawing etc. the laminated panels within 30 minutes for completion and possible shipment the same day.
We also had our TB-60 Hot Roll Laminator in the booth. We had good interest from many new customers and those that are still running their old Monco TB-60. It seems that after 20, 30 or 40 years they are starting to need new equipment to continue quality production of decorative paper laminated panels.
Black Bros. Co. is the exclusive distributor of Rapha Products in North America. We had Rapha’s RBM 1500 Rotary Brushing Machine on display in our booth. We were running live demonstrations of cabinet doors going through the RBM 1500 to clean the over spayed adhesive from the back side. This machine has proven to be a real labor savings for our customer in the 3-D laminating business. The back side of the cabinet doors must be cleaned by hand using and orbital sander. The Rapha RBM 1500 can clean up to 2,000 parts per 8 hour shift.
