This post is part of Plyco’s Guide to Laminated Plywood
It’s an extremely tough task to summarise the question “What is Laminated Plywood?” Laminated Plywood exists in so many unique forms that coming up with a catchy one or two sentence description isn’t doing it proper justice. If you describe it one way you might accurately describe Spotless Laminate, but in doing so you might be ignoring a different product like Formply. Because the overall term can be a little non-specific, we’ve put together this guide to showcase it in its many forms and do our best to actually explain what Plyco’s Laminated Plywood range is.
Plyco's Formply Laminated Plywood.
Essentially, Laminated Plywood is any piece of Plywood that has had a laminate or film face applied directly to one, or both, of the faces on a raw Plywood substrate. These laminates come in many different varieties, offering different colours, textures, and grain details. The ever-changing nature of Laminated Plywood means that it can actually be tricky to pick it out of a crowd at times. Obviously, a mint-green sheet of Decoply is easy enough to spot, but it gets trickier when you see something like Jarrah Laminato from a distance. This is actually one of the strengths of using a laminate, as it’s virtually impossible to differentiate whether something is utilising a natural timber laminate from a distance.
Plyco's "Mint" Decoply colour option.
To create our laminated product ranges we need two things; the substrate and the laminate. At Plyco, we can essentially press laminates to three different raw products. The first of which is Birch Plywood, as you may have guessed, but our MDF and Particle Board can also be laminated. Giving customers as much choice as possible is a bit of a theme here, and that definitely applies to our substrates. While Plywood is the most popular choice, we’ll often see requests where the inherent capabilities of MDF or Particle Board are desired.
Once you’ve decided on your laminate and substrate it’s time for the creation process to begin. The materials are passed over to our Melbourne manufacturing plant and our Plywood gurus get to pressing. When we say press, we really mean press. The board and laminate are put into a large press that utilises intense heat and pressure to fuse the two together, which creates the stunning Laminated Plywood sheets you can view in our showrooms. These laminates are classified as High-Pressure Laminates, or HPLs, and are a direct descendant of the original style plastic laminates. This evolution of the laminate has made them much more stable, durable, and consistent - all amazing qualities that are desired in nearly every application Laminated Plywood is used for!
Plyco's range of Decoply Laminates
Plyco’s laminate covered Plywood products are made on a per order basis. This means we don’t usually have sheets of Spotless Laminate or the like sitting on our shelves every single day. However, the beauty of having our own manufacturing plant means we can get to producing your specific order almost immediately after you’re finished placing your order. This is also why we’re able to provide so many different options. With 13 Laminato and Decoply options, as well as 6 Spotless colours, that’s a whole lot of laminate stock we have on hand. Providing so many unique choices would usually be unfeasible, but by creating the sheets ourselves this isn’t a problem.
Plyco's Black Spotless Laminate
Hopefully, you’ve got a solid base knowledge of what Laminated Plywood is now. If you think you’re ready to go off and start looking for your perfect sheet, head over to our online store where you can view every product in our range. Alternatively, you can check out some of our other posts in our Guide to Laminated Plywood. We recommend the posts focused on Laminated Plywood Applications, and the Top Properties of Laminated Plywood.