Creating a solid basis with MC systems

Industrial floors undergo a great deal of wear and tear. Their importance for ensuring disruption-free operations only becomes truly evident once their quality has deteriorated. However, with suitable product systems it is possible not only to effectively refurbish and safeguard industrial floors but also to optimise the associated production processes long-term. The production building of Electro Alfa International of Botosani, Romania, offers an example of the kinds of improvement that are achievable.
Electro Alfa International manufactures electrical equipment for low and medium voltage applications, and also electricity generators for special applications. It supplies its products to, among others, Siemens, Daewoo and E.on. Areas of the industrial floor in the production facility of Electro Alfa had become heavily damaged and were no longer loadable or trafficable. This had a considerably adverse effect on the production processes as the damaged areas had to be bypassed. Repair and refurbishment had therefore become a matter of urgency. The task was to fill and level gaps in the concrete substrate while also increasing its compressive and tensile strength. This then had to be provided with a resistant, protective industrial flooring system. Following initial talks with the customer in September 2013, PT sales rep Marius Lucaci put together an offer for repairing and protecting the floor.
The solution

To repair and refurbish the badly damaged floor, he proposed priming the surface with two coats of the transparent epoxy resin MC-DUR 1177 WV-A. This initial layer was to be covered by the self-levelling polymer cement Emcefloor PCC Pro to eliminate the unevenness and create a smooth substrate offering the required increase in compressive strength. Emcefloor PCC Pro was selected primarily for reasons of cost-efficiency. Durable protection of the floor thus repaired was to be achieved by application of the hard-wearing, low-viscous universal epoxy resin MC-DUR 1200, with MC-DUR 1800 being used in areas exposed to particularly high loading levels. MC-DUR 1800 offers not only high resistance to aggressive chemical attack but also the conductivity needed to prevent any build-up and discharge of static electricity. Both systems are characterised by an exceptionally long service lifetime and can be provided with an anti-slip finish.

The execution

The customer wanted to first test the proposed solutions on a small area of the production facility’s floor. Tensile test measurements carried out on the repaired area confirmed the exceptional properties of the MC products: the mean value produced by the pull- off test in this case amounted to 1.5 N/mm², while the figure measured at the beginning for the untreated area was only around 0.4 N/mm². The compressive strength value also increased from 9.36 to 34.55 N/mm². This convinced the customer to the extent that the go-ahead was given for the repair of 2,200 m² of flooring with Emcefloor PCC Pro and application of the specialised industrial flooring systems MC-DUR 1200 (4,100 m²) and MC-DUR 1800 (600 m²). The project was carried out from January to March 2014 and resulted not only in an improvement in the floor but also a number of other positive effects: with the new flooring in place, the production line could be repositioned, leading to an improvement in manufacturing time; and aside from an increase in efficiency, the professional appearance of the “new” production facility also meant that it now made a particularly good impression during external audits.