Slatwall

Slatwall is used within the shopfitting industry to display and promote products in a shop. It is great as it take up hardly any room and allows easy movement of all the slatwall display accessories. Accessories such as hooks and shelves simply slot in to one of the slats at whatever position you want and offer a sturdy attachment.

Slatwall comes in 8' x 4' sheets made of MDF. MDF is actually made from very fine sawdust compacted tightly together using adhesive to make a very strong wood-like product without any kind of grain. This means it is very easy to work with and natural variations o not occur.

The MDF can either be provided raw (unfinished) or more commonly with a Melamine finish to it, either a colour or woodgrain pattern. The MDF is provided to the manufacturer in an unroutered state and it is down to the manufacturer to then create the slats. This is done using a computer controlled router or CNC machine.

The router routes the slats at 100mm centres as standard but bespoke measurements can be acheived such as 75mm and 50mm centres.

On melamine finished boards it is quite common to use PVC or aluminium inserts in the grooves. This is beneficial for two reasons. Firstly it prevents the melamine finish from being chipped or damaged when when inserting or removing slatwall accessories, secondly it allows to tailor your colour scheme and make the display look cosmetically appealing.

Many finishes and colours are available, some of the more common ones are:

White, Cream, Grey, Beech, Maple, Oak, Cherry, Walnut, Red, Yellow, Blue, Black, Granite and Silver.

Slatwall Panels are often bought in quantity when fitting out new shops as it is so versatile and relatively inexpensive. One of the major costs involved is the transportation. Each panel weighs around 25Kg. This combined with the size makes them quite difficult to handle.

Once slatwall panels are in place then it is down to the shop owner to create displays using slatwall accessories, or fixings. These include hooks, arms, shelves, rails and all kinds of dirrent items depending on what the shopkeeper wishes to display.

This is quite an old computer-controlled router but it still does the job. The video shows a 4-headed router machining an 8'x4' landscape panel in white.