It was during the mid-90s that Christian Blyt designed a piece of plywood to do the impossible: Bend it into a sinusoidal formation, creating a beautiful panel of corrugated wood without any fracturing. This was for his master's thesis in Finland at Alvar Aalto University. Fast-forward 15+ years, and the product has become a full-fledged company. Launched in 2011, Corelam is now used for furniture, panels, doors, sound-proofing, and other things yet to be invented.
We've written about wood movement and warping before, framing it more as a problem to be fixed instead of a brilliant idea to be captured. So how did Blyt figure out how to bend wood so perfectly into such a thin panel (only 2.4 mm thick)?
Ultimately he wanted something thin but strong, as Corelam's strict mandate is to do more with less. Corelam is much lighter, thinner and uses much less material than typical plywood yet has the same size and strength.
Corelam is made of three pieces of veneer: two parallel layers with a third layer that lies perpendicular to add strength. The core veneer is 1 mm thick and the face of the panel is only 0.8 mm thick. To produce the sort of product he wanted, without any fracturing, Blyt and a team custom-designed and built a press that can exert 400 tons of pressure.
The paper-thin sheet is placed in the cavities of the semi-automated press. Instead of the typical six or eight hydraulic cylinders in most wood presses, theirs has 34 separate moving cylinders using a pressure of 350 psi.
When the sheet goes into the press, it is 54 inches long, losing 5 inches to emerge at 49 inches. No machines exist to sand and finish corrugated wood, and Blyt soon became tired of using a hand sander to finish the sinusoidal panels, so he and his team built his press to produce a finished, complete product.
One of the key parts to his process is the film Blyt uses. He researched thermally-bonded glue films and the use of craft paper as the carrier for the resin. He took initial inspiration from the wooden food trays he'd seen in European cafeterias. And it struck him: How did a piece of wood withstand the kind of punishment of a commercial dishwasher, over and over?
Such trays use a melamine resin and so Blyt decided that would be the film he'd use. The additional plus is that the resin goes on dry. If it were wet, the veneer would start to move and warp.
It's only at the moment when the heat from the press (which runs at 320° F) hits the wood that the films liquefy and then thermally bonds the layers of veneers and creates the surface finish. Once this happens the shape of the wood is permanently fixed, and can never be altered or go soft.
Corelam is now a family of products all based on the idea of lightness—from the literal definition to the sustainable one.
Depending on quantitites and what type of veneer species Corelam roughly costs $16–19 per square foot. The price varies greatly depending on the type of veneer used for the face. Rosewood might go as high as $110 per square foot. It can be used for furniture, panels, doors, all products are inert and free of VOC and formaldehydes.
Blyt will also work with designers and architects to create custom solutions, from doors to paneling. For instance, he recently worked with designer Benjamin Hubert to design a "ripple table."
Corelam has interesting acoustic properties and can be used for soundproofing panels. By merely curving the corrugated wood, either into a convex or concave shape, sound waves are interfered and ultimately diffused.
Using a laser cutter to perforate the sheet and having a damping material positioned behind it the Corelam panel becomes a sound absorbing product. This new product will be supported by an upcoming Kickstarter campaignand will target DIYers. As for the future Blyt said, "More and more beneficial properties have emerged from this single idea," which was always his hope for doing more with less.
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