Helen Kuhl, editorial director of CWB and Wood & Wood Products, hit the floor running at Interzum 2009, a leading international supplier tradeshow, to bring ISWonline readers the scoop on industry-changing innovations being unveiled. Follow her as she brings the action from day three, which included innovative edgebanding solutions and a highly customized lift system.

COLOGNE, GERMANY — The last day at Interzum is quieter, but still lively. I am still covering new ground, and I came across one of the most exciting innovations today in the arena of edgebanding at the Rehau booth. To meet the demand from European customers for a truly seamless edge where there is no glue line showing, Rehau developed an edgebanding product that is applied using a laser. The laser changes the composition of the banding and, when it is pressed on the substrate, it forms a chemical bond and becomes part of the board. There is no glue.

At Ligna, IMA will be showcasing the edgebander it developed using a laser instead of glue, which will apply this new edgebanding. According to Rehau, there already are some large Italian casework manufacturers who are using this new technology. They are making this investment in order to offer a higher-end product in the marketplace – to differentiate themselves and avoid competition at the lower-end. It’s their way to cope with “the crisis,” as people at Interzum refer to the current global economic woes.

Another interesting new product was introduced by Thomas Regout, a company that manufacturers highly customized drawer slides. It has developed a unique new mechanical system that lifts and lowers cabinets effortlessly – and I mean the entire cabinet box. The system calculates the weight inside the cabinet if items, like canned goods, are added or removed, and it re-balances itself.

You can see this demonstrated in these two videos below – one showing the system lifting a wall cabinet and one where it is being used to lift a bathroom sink!

Also on video – a look at the newest product introduced by Grass at Interzum, the Dynapro drawer system. It will be coming to the U.S. market in a few months.

Lightweight panels:
Worldwide interest in lightweight panels continues to expand. Interzum housed several exhibitors who are providing the materials to produce panels as well as the connector fittings to create furniture and cabinetry.

To emphasize what is being done with this emerging technology, Interzum included a section for “lightweight construction” as part of a futuristic exhibit called “innovations in interiors,” which is presented for the first time in one of its halls.

This section featured examples of some of the products currently made with lightweight panels, including kitchen cabinets by Poggenpohl and Nolte Kitchens, as well as modular furniture to demonstrate these products’ strength and versatility. Also available was data from extensive research conducted by Prof. Martin Storch at the University of Applied Sciences in Lemgo, Germany. Among other things, the university has created 240 different types of lightweight panels, utilizing a wide variety of core materials – including Kellogg’s Smacks cereal, popcorn and rice cakes. All the materials produce panels that have similar strength and properties to lightweight panels made with more traditional core materials, like honeycomb paper.

You can take a walk through this exhibit in the video below.

And if you want to tap into the extensive data about lightweight panels, as well as source finished products, check out a new Web site called “lightweight.finder” developed by the university and a non-profit group called igel. It’s at www.ifurn.net.

More amazing innovations on display at Interzum! It was quite a full three days!