particle board

Particle board is also called chipboard, raw wood is cleaned and debarked through large processing equipment, then sliced into small wood chips, then dried, arranged horizontally and vertically, and then pressed under high temperature and high pressure. Many carpenters will tell you: 'Look at this cross-section, this board is full of fragments inside, it's very bad.'

But if you look, all large furniture brands in the board industry, all listed companies use particle board, including many imported furniture. If you spend tens of thousands of yuan buying furniture from Italy and saw it open, you might find particle board inside.

So is particle board good? Actually particle board is very good. Companies that can produce particle board, one production line costs tens of millions or even hundreds of millions for high-end production lines, with stable quality, good physical properties, good nail-holding power, and guaranteed environmental performance. What determines environmental performance? Environmental performance depends on adhesive. Now large board factories use MDI non-formaldehyde adhesive, environmental performance all reaches E0 level or above.

For particle board brand recommendations, choose big brands, such as imported Egger, Cleaf, Kronospan, Red Cotton, Daha etc.

ecological board

If you have ecological board in hand, you can see that the inside of ecological board is spliced solid wood strips, both sides are stabilization layers. Ecological board has very good appearance, we can directly see the complete wood strips inside, so carpenters all say ecological board is good, but almost all large furniture brands don't make ecological board, why?

Because carpenters process directly on-site at home, using small cutting machines, which can only cut ecological board. If you use a small cutting machine to cut particle board, it will cause edge chipping, because particle board has high hardness and high density, small cutting machines cannot be used to cut particle board. So carpenters all say ecological board is good and particle board is bad.

But large furniture brands do nationwide market, requiring stable quality. Ecological board has large proportion of raw wood, relatively easy to expand and contract with heat and cold, easily deforms and cracks, many after-sales problems.

Here I'm sharing another small knowledge point. The name 'ecological board' is what the market calls it. If we look at the board names in national standards, there is no 'ecological board', its name should becalledjoinery board, large core board.

Because ecological board has relatively simple production process, production lines can be built for just a few hundred thousand yuan, the market is chaotic, many small workshops, most cannot be found online, the adhesive used is urea-formaldehyde glue, with seriously exceeding formaldehyde standards.

OSB board

Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF)

What is MDF? MDF is made by grinding waste wood and waste paper into powder or pulp, then pressing them under high temperature and high pressure. The hardness of MDF can be adjusted - higher density pressing produces high-density board, lower density produces medium-density board, followed by low-density board. The uses of MDF are also easy to understand - for example, when we need to carve a shape, pattern, or create a special design on cabinet doors, MDF is used to reduce costs and replace solid wood.

Particleboard uses a lot of glue, so environmentally speaking it raises some red flags, and the formaldehyde risk is quite high, so it's best to avoid using particleboard in home decoration.

Multi-layer board

Finally, let's talk about multilayer board. Multilayer board is made by horizontally and vertically joining multiple thin layers in an LVL structure. Multilayer board was first used in bathroom cabinets and other environments prone to moisture, because multilayer board has excellent waterproof performance. However, its usage in furniture is very limited, because if multilayer board is used over too large an area, it tends to deform and bend.