I am interested in how the collective body feels about the different brands of melamine.

I can buy a good white for a little under $20 a sheet (3/4" 4 x 8) or I can spend a fair amount more for Tafisa white.

I'm new to working with melamine. Are there significant differences between melamines?

Mark

Comparing commodity melamine to Tafisia is like comparing a Mercedes to a Hyundai. That said there are better and lesser brands of commodity melamine. A lot will depend on the variety of brands you have available locally. In our area on the commodity level we are very limited.

There are lots of variables in melamine. The thickness of the saturated paper can vary a lot. The quality of the board that it is applied to has a huge affect on how well the edges machine. Not all manufacturers will have all colors or patterns available. The best is usually well worth it's price.

There can be huge differences in quality. I’ve had guys sell me stuff and say it’s the same as xyz that you are using now. When it arrives The melamine paper is so thin that it’s almost transparent. While technically the same color, being so thin it actually changes the color.
Board composition is also important. Cheap stuff is usually less dense and doesn’t have the strength or the screw holding power. If you are running on a CNC and doing and kind of mortise and tenon construction the cheap stuff doesn’t machine anywhere near as good.
Then you have the quality of the product. Cheap stuff will normally have more sheets that have blemishes in The surface and you normally don’t catch those until it’s halfway through the shop, resulting in expensive remakes.
Other than that, it’s all the same

I recently purchased 3 remnant sheets that were a fir PBC as apposed to pine PBC. I intended for these to just be used in the shop so I didn't care to much about the quality. Even with a sharp high angle ATB blade on my slider (not using a scoring blade), I could not get a clean cut on the edges. I got consistent surfaces chipping on both the top and bottom sides of the sheet. With a pine core I get beautiful cuts both sides with out a scoring blade. Fir fibers are stronger than pine and don't shear as easy even with sharp tooling and will pull away sometimes before they will cut. So watch the grade of core material you use. It may cost a little more but well worth it.

Is the consensus that pine core is better than fir core?

I have found the fir core to be flatter and hold screws better, YMMV

I don't want to say this is the consensus. Just my experience at this time. I have never before used a fir PBC before. Also, the machining results may be very different if you're using a CNC as apposed to a slider with or without scoring. This material may have also been a lower end brand or even a cheep import, I didn't ask or really care. I have never had screw holding problems with pine core as long as I am using a proper length screw for the thickness I am attaching. In retrospect, I never directly answered Marks question from my point-of-view which is you will get what you pay for! Just like anything, brand names will stand out over others. Just doing some research on a well know name I have purchased before, Roseburg is a big name in Melamine panels and I found out that contrary to what I believed, there panels are manufactured from fir. I always believed it was pine. It may also depend on what part of the country the materials are manufactured since they own plants in a number of north west as well as south and south east states. Now I went out to the shop to look closer and compare the two materials I have and find a clear difference between what I know is Roseburg premium melamine and this cheaper stuff I purchased for utility purposes. The premium is noticeably denser with finer size fibers and less porous looking than the other. I believe I have become some what complacent over 35 years in trusting what I buy but I feel comfortable in trusting the brand names I have come to know even it costs a more.

Being in the middle of the country we get Mel bd from a lot of places. The best is on western pine board from a small manufacturer in Denver. Menards owns a plant in S. Dakota, they will drop ship here, OK board. Better than the Roseburg we sometimes get. I bought a couple of units of Mexican board at auction, really cheap. The white paper was thin, almost see through but the P Bd core was good. Have gotten southern yellow pine core a few times. OK but not as good as some of the western pine cores. You can get mel on MDF also. The bigger the wood chips on the face, the more likely to chip.

The Mexican board that is best suited for the 4th of July?

It was about 20 years ago that I tried Tafisa. That was before I had a CNC. When the salesman made his sales pitch, he said the melamine surface was thicker and harder that the Panolam I was using. I found this to be true but I also found that we got more chipping. I stopped using it.