For over a decade, Apex Machine Group has supplied customers across the U.S. and Canada with high-quality finishing equipment and accessories for softwoods, hardwoods, plywood, and engineered materials. Our machinery helps customers achieve various finishes quickly and efficiently in one pass. Learn more about finishing processes, why they’re necessary for wood products, and how we can help.
What Is Wood Finishing?
Wood finishing is typically a final step in wood manufacturing processes. The purpose is twofold: to add a protective layer to workpieces and improve the appearance of a wooden surface. This finishing layer gives wood material added resistance when in contact with moisture, heat, or other harsh environmental conditions to safeguard against splitting or swelling. Before adding any oils, lacquers, waxes, stains, varnishes, or other finishing treatments, however, manufacturers typically use equipment like abrasive sanding belts and brush sanders to prepare the wood surfaces to accept the finishing treatments.
Importance of Wood Finishing Solutions
Unfinished or raw wood material is rugged and hard, which can make it difficult to work within manufacturing. It is also more sensitive to damage from its environment. For wooden products to hold up over time, finishing processes on Apex equipment remove scratches, rough edges or surfaces, imperfections, uneven grains, and loose fibers for a flawless look and improved material resistance. Our machinery has the added capability to generate wood of a desired thickness. Properly finished wood will enable finish treatments like wood stains to penetrate the pores in the wood’s surface and adhere.
Wood Finishing Solutions at Apex
At Apex Machine Group, we offer multiple wood finishing solutions to best serve our customers, including:
- Sanding. An abrasion process that targets mill marks, sanding utilizes a wide belt sander to smooth the surface of a wood board. By sanding out any scratches or uneven areas in the grain of the wood face, this technique readies the surface for receiving finishes.
- Calibrating. Wide belt sanders configured with hard contact drums and multiple cutterheads carry out calibration, or the removal of wooden stock or material to achieve a predetermined thickness and tight tolerances, all with precision. This equipment can sand away heavy amounts of stock and clean up glued panels to quickly and effectively size components.
- Denibbing/brushing. Denibbing or brushing machinery, such as a lineal brush sander, utilizes flexible abrasive strips to remove any loose fibers of material, sharp edges, or knife and chatter marks on 2D or 3D wooden components. This equipment works with “raw wood” or “whitewood” sanding and sealer or primer scuffing.
- Finish sanding. Using as many as four combination heads and veneer platens for sanding and finishing, finish sanding machinery applies the heads to sand wooden components with increasingly higher grits. Ultimately, the wood will be ready for the finished room.
- Distressing. Automated feed-through equipment for distressing processes gives various types of wood an aged or weathered look for a more rustic aesthetic. Distressing also applies to cleaning and salvaging older wood, like barn wood, to repurpose the material for a new life as flooring, mantels, beams, picture frames, and more.
Partner With Apex for Optimal Wood Finishes
Since 2010, Apex Machine Group has developed into a world leader in the finishing market. To help customers achieve their desired wood finish, our company supplies a complete line of equipment to optimize results. We offer abrasive sanding machinery with up to four working heads, rotating brushes, and oscillating discs for precision finishing in a single pass, along with any needed supplies, for wood as well as plastic and metal parts.
Contact us today to learn more about our wood solutions and our machines’ applications for your project.