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Op­ti­mi­sa­tion in Me­chan­i­cal Pol­ish­ing and Spray Buff­ing of Re­silient Floor Cov­er­ings with Re­gard to High-Speed Tech­niques

AiF 10254 N

1. Sci­en­tif­ic Ques­tion

For the first time the co­her­ences be­tween mea­sur­able sizes (tem­per­a­ture, pres­sure, time) and phys­i­cal and physiko­chem­i­cal pro­cess­es in floor pol­ish­es was de­scribed quan­ti­ta­tive­ly.

2. Re­search tar­get and way of so­lu­tion

2.1 Aim

The aim of the re­search pro­ject con­sist­ed to im­prove clean­ing meth­ods and re­pair mea­sures for re­silient floor cov­er­ings. From this the daily clean­ing in­ter­val of the floor cov­er­ings can be given up in favor of only two or three times per week.

At a newly de­vel­oped lab­o­ra­to­ry ma­chine the demage of the floor­ing from the nor­mal walk­ing wear can be sim­u­lat­ed with­in short­est time. On a also com­plete­ly new de­signed lab­o­ra­to­ry sin­gle disk ma­chine for high-speed bur­nish­ing and buff­ing these work­ing pro­cess­es can be con­duct­ed under cer­tain con­di­tions. Both ma­chines were througout­ly com­pared with the prac­tice be­fore the be­gin­ning of the main in­ves­ti­ga­tions to be able to ad­just them so that the meth­ods used in prac­tice could be con­vert­ed in op­ti­mal way.

2.2 Re­sults

Floor cov­er­ings will be ap­plied at first with a coat­ing be­fore they are used in the lab­o­ra­to­ry ma­chine to sim­u­late the wear of walk­ing. On these coat­ings all the usual in­ter-clean­ing meth­ods can be used, which are ap­pli­ca­ble after heavy wear by the use of the lab­o­ra­to­ry sin­gle disk ma­chine for high-speed bur­nish­ing.

The ge­o­met­ri­cal re­duc­tions car­ried out in the ma­chines don’t im­pair the re­sult if scale fac­tors for the pro­cess vari­ables are taken into ac­count.

The lab­o­ra­to­ry sin­gle disk ma­chine for high-speed bur­nish­ing and buff­ing can work on floor cov­er­ings up to a speed of 2000 rpm. All ma­chine pads are us­able for pol­ish­ing after they have been cut to size on the ma­chine de­mands.

Demage fre­quent­ly ap­pear­ing in prac­tice can sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly be pro­duced and ex­am­ined. It could be stat­ed that every pol­ish (poly­mer or wax dis­per­sion) nor­mal­ly has a spe­cif­ic tem­per­a­ture at which demage start to ap­pear at the sur­face. This tem­per­a­ture is de­pen­dent on the basic poly­mers and is called glass tran­si­tion tem­per­a­ture.

The coat­ing gets soft and there­fore del­i­cate against de­struc­tion after ex­ceed­ing the tem­per­a­ture. The ma­chine pa­ram­e­ters, at witch this tem­per­a­ture is reached are de­pend­ing on the sur­face of the dis­per­sion, on the pre-dam­age from wear as well as on the ma­chine pad used. Since there are only dis­tinc­tions in color for these pads witch say only lit­tle about the sim­i­lar­i­ty of a prod­uct from two man­u­fac­tur­ers, ne­ces­si­ties have been shown for a more dif­fer­ent­ly gen­er­al clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

A clas­si­fi­ca­tion was car­ried out at the pads used in the re­search pro­ject. With the help of these data it can be taken from lists, at which ma­chine pa­ram­e­ters demage can for cer­tain be avoid­ed. With this data the ma­chine pa­ram­e­ters also can be cho­sen, to set a cer­tain level of the de­sired gloss. The gloss be­comes high­er if the rev­o­lu­tions per minute of the used pol­ish­ing ma­chines in­crease. As a coun­ter­move the pres­sure form the weight of the ma­chine on the pad must be re­duced or the num­ber of the pro­cess­ings are to be re­duced in order to pre­vent demage.

The man­u­fac­tur­ers of main­te­nance chem­i­cals can de­vel­op the prod­ucts so that the op­ti­mal­ly de­sired gloss at def­i­nite cus­tom­ary ma­chine val­ues (weight, rpm) is reached with­out that demage ap­pears.

The en­ter­pris­es of the build­ing main­ta­nence and con­tract clean­ing in­dus­try can use the re­sults to use newly avail­able ma­chines and op­ti­mized ma­chine tech­nol­o­gy with ad­justable char­ac­ter­is­tics (weight on pad) lead­ing to a good ren­o­va­tion and pol­ish­ing re­sult with­out caus­ing demage.

3. Eco­nom­ic value for small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es

The pos­si­bil­i­ty to reach cost sav­ings by more ef­fec­tive use of avail­able ma­chine tech­nol­o­gy leads to ab­bre­vi­at­ed times for pro­cess­ing and cir­cum­stances per­mit­ting high­er ma­chine usage time in build­ing main­te­nance and clean­ing con­trac­tor en­ter­pris­es.

The ren­o­va­tion meth­ods makes it pos­si­ble to ex­tend the life time of coat­ings and floor cov­er­ings. The time pe­ri­od can be pro­longed be­tween two strip­pings of the pol­ish and there­fore re­duce the cost-in­ten­sive work with it. Fur­ther­more it is pos­si­ble to do com­plete­ly with­out a strip­ping of the pol­ish under cer­tain bound­ary con­di­tions with the de­vel­oped ren­o­va­tion tech­niques.

To the rubbed off re­duced layer thick­ness­es pol­ish can be added after a cer­tain pre­treat­ment eas­i­ly so that it is no more nec­es­sary to strip with chem­i­cals. One there­fore shall cal­cu­late with con­sid­er­able cost sav­ings in clean­ing and main­te­nance of build­ings.

4. In­tend­ed trans­la­tion of the re­search re­sults into ac­tion

The trans­fer of the re­sults con­sists from the an­nounce­ment in pro­fes­sion­al jour­nals, par­tic­u­lar­ly such, witch are read by staff of en­ter­pris­es of the build­ing main­te­nance and clean­ing field. The knowl­edge trans­fer is pri­mar­i­ly car­ried out by in­di­vid­u­al ad­vice of sin­gles busi­ness­es.

It is planned, to pass the knowl­edge around ma­chine bur­nish­ing and buff­ing on to in­ter­est­ed per­son­al in sem­i­nars and work­shops.

5. Key­words

  • Cleaning and building maintenance industry
  • Resilient floor coverings
  • Polish
  • Burnishing
  • Spray buffing
  • Repair of walking streets
  • Wear of flooring

6. Ac­knowl­edge­ments

The re­search pro­ject (AiF-RP-No. 10254) was sup­port­ed from the bud­get of the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs through the Ar­beits­ge­mein­schaft in­dus­trieller Forschungsvere­ini­gun­gen “Otto von Gu­er­icke” e.V. (AiF) (As­so­ci­a­tion of In­dus­tri­al Re­search Or­gan­i­sa­tions). We would like to thank all fund­ing or­gan­i­sa­tions.

 

The re­search re­port is avail­able on re­quest from FRT.

The IGF-pro­ject AiF 10254 N of the re­search as­so­ci­a­tion Europäische Forschungs­ge­mein­schaft Reini­gungs- und Hy­gien­etech­nolo­gie e.V., Cam­pus Ficht­en­hain 11, 47807 Krefeld, was sup­port­ed via the AiF with­in the fund­ing pro­gram „In­dus­trielle Gemein­schafts­forschung und -en­twick­lung (IGF)“ by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and Cli­mate Ac­tion due to a de­ci­sion of the Ger­man Par­lia­ment.