How Fiberglass Chairs are made: What is a Fiberglass?
Fiberglass is a plane material made from chemical combinations of multiple glass fibers. They are combined together to make-up a single plane material known as fiberglass. The term fiberglass refers to the material used in the body of ferryboats, aircraft, and some cars. It is a hard material that is highly fire resistance. However, it can be made without any application of heat. In this post we will be discussing about how Fiberglass Chairs are made.
In other words, fiberglass materials are made simply by bringing large number of glass fiber together using fiber chemical and pressing layer of the fibers against each other to form a thick plane body usually applied in aircraft body, ferryboats body, and Vehicles body.
The use of fiber in engineering became necessary when it was found to have many advantages against metals and polymer plastics. For instance, fiber has high resistance to fire. Fiber is considerably light in weight while retaining high level of strength that enables it to bear heavy loads despite the light weight.
The application of fiber in engineering helps in producing lightweight aircraft, lightweight vehicles, lightweight boats and many others. The advantages of such lightweight transportation machines includes lesser engine size for powering which results to lesser power consumptions.
When considered with metal counterparts such as duralumin use in making of aircraft body. Fiber appears to have more advantage especially due to its lightweight. This has really reduced the use of metals in most transportation machines/vehicles. However, in the areas where special properties are needed, metal or its alloy can be used.
Considering the above major advantages of fiber, it applications in many areas has become necessary. And this is not limited to machines and transportation vehicles. It has extended to home appliances, office appliances, industrial tools, and lots more. The most prominent of them all is the use of fiber in making chairs.
You may not have noticed it or heard of it because most of the fiber chairs are mistaken to be plastic chairs. The reason being the similarity of looks between the two. A well-furnished fiber chair can look like plastic chair except for those that knows the difference between the two chairs.
For this reason we will discuss about fiber chairs and how you can differentiate it from plastic chairs.
How to know a fiber Chair
Fiberglass chairs are chairs made from fiber materials. It is completely different from plastic chairs. While the two may lookalike, the fiberglass chair may have lesser smooth surface than the plastic chair due to the making process.
The fiber chair is painted after its making but the plastic chair paint is homogenous with its entire material from the interior to the exterior of the chair body. This simply means that the color of plastic chair is added during it manufacturing process known as polymerization. While the one of fiber chair is applied after the making of the chair. It is painted just like a wooden furniture.
The painting of fiber chair is mainly for beautification purpose otherwise, it does not really play any vital role because the quality remains the same even after painting. The same goes for plastic chairs. Their color addition does not add any value to the chairs’ quality rather than to beautify it.
While the plastic chair production undergoes the polymerization process, the fiberglass chair making undergoes pressing process.
Making of fiber chairs usually involve manual or automated method of pressing/compressing many pieces of fiber glass together with a solvent chemical. The result will be a thick layer material that takes the shape of any mold it is pressed against while adding those fiber glasses.
Once the process solidifies, it will retain that shape and cannot be reshaped again except to destroy it. This is not the same with plastic because the shape of plastic can be adjusted through heat applications or recycled to the plastic machine for repetition.
The video below shows the making of fiber chair. It is the main modern industrial approach in making of fiberglass chairs. The procedures involve getting the specified size of fiber glass together. They are then pressed together and forced to take the shape of the mold.
Afterwards, the excessive parts are trimmed off while the edges are smoothened to obtain appealing edges.
The finishing procedure is to spray quality paint that easily sticks on the fiber to form aesthetic looks. Though there special paints for this purpose, some paints such as car paints can still work well on fiber surfaces.
The last step is to fix the metal legs on the fiberglass chair after the painting has dried. The legs can be made with metals in order to provide good support for the chair.
