So I needed to do a bit of edge banding, but so far it has been a fairly miserable experience.  I find it difficult to get the banding to stick evenly.  It tends to splinter when trimming, and it usually gets glue everywhere. However it is one of the few things that makes plywood look solid, and so it is worth trying to come up with a better technique.

The first thing to do is build a jig to hold your boards.  This is easy to crank out, and it makes it much simpler to hold the work.  That in turn gives you more control.

The next trick is to use the right material.  Somehow I ended up with 3/4" banding, and I was using it on a 1/2" board.  It is much more likely to shred if your using too wide of a tape.  I ordered a 1/2" roll and it worked much better.

One thing I recently discovered is that you don't need to use nearly as much heat and pressure as you would think. The glue melts in just a few seconds, and if you overheat it and press too hard then all the glue leaks out and nothing will stick.

When trimming the edge I find it is best to trim one side, then go ahead and trim the whole edge.  That seems to reduce the chance of the end splitting or tearing.

Finally I have tried several tricks for trimming back the side of the edge banding, but none of them worked well.  I tried trimming with a razer blade, that wandered.  Trimming with a file, that tended to gouge the material or create a fold.  I tried a chisel, but that was a real mess.  I broke down and picked up this orange trimmer designed for edge banding, but it was not sharp enough and caused a lot of tear out.  

Finally I followed a tip from Alexandre Chappel, he recommended using a blade from a planer.  I found a cheap set of replacement blades on Amazon.  They are a bit small, but they work very well. If you find your getting some tear out, then try cutting from the other direction, you may be fighting against the grain of the tape.

These helped, but I still hate edge banding.  It is a lot of work, for a splotchy messy result.  Maybe I need better quality tape, or just more experience.  In any event, it is done, and it turned out better than I expected.