Tiếng Việt
中文 (中国)
A mechanical workshop sets its floor an overall problem, not a single requirement. The same floor must support fixed machinery, carry trolleys and pallets moving across it, receive oil, grease and cutting fluids, and be scratched daily by metal swarf. This article presents an overall solution for mechanical workshops from that angle. This article does not go deep into load calculations for forklifts and heavy trucks, nor does it go deep into oil resistance on its own as a standalone topic; those two in-depth angles belong to separate articles on forklift-bearing floors and oil-resistant floors, and this article keeps to its own overall scope and does not encroach on those two angles.
Three types of load occurring together in a mechanical workshop
The first is static load and vibration from fixed machinery: machine feet, machine bases and bolt-anchoring positions create concentrated pressure and vibration transmitted down to the floor throughout the machining process. The second is moving load: workpiece trolleys, finished-product pallets and small forklifts moving along fixed routes, creating wear in tracks and shear force when turning. The third is impact and falling objects: workpieces, tools and machined parts falling from bench height onto the floor. A flooring system for a mechanical workshop must be designed for all three types of load at the same time, together with adhesion to the concrete substrate, because a coating that peels at a machine foot or a walkway will spread quickly as it continues to bear load and oil and grease.
Oil, grease and cutting fluids: more a housekeeping problem than a chemical problem
In a mechanical workshop, hydraulic oil, lubricating oil, grease and cutting fluids leaking from machines are a daily occurrence. A seamless epoxy surface with few joints helps oil from soaking deep into the substrate as it does with raw concrete and helps cleaning go faster, but epoxy does not clean oil by itself and does not make oil harmless: oil left standing still makes the floor slippery, holds dust and swarf, and can reduce the adhesion of the coating at joints and edges if it is not cleaned. The solution for a mechanical workshop therefore always consists of two parts that go together: a seamless coating and an oil-collection routine — drip trays under machines, immediate clean-up of spilled oil, and separate washing and machining areas. Slip resistance for areas with oil needs to be considered separately, because a surface wet with oil is much more slippery than a surface wet with water. See also: Anti-Slip Epoxy Floors: Quartz Sand or Aluminium Oxide Grit?
Metal swarf: the silent enemy of the topcoat
Sharp, small and hard metal swarf, dragged across the workshop by wheels and shoes, scratches the topcoat over time. At first, scratches only affect appearance, but when scratches become deep and dense, the surface becomes hard to clean, holds oil and dust, and creates starting points for peeling. The practical approach is to clean swarf daily by a suitable method, not letting swarf build up on walkways and machining areas, combined with periodic inspection of fast-wearing positions such as the main walkway and the area around machining equipment. When the topcoat has clearly worn, early localised repair will be much cheaper and faster than redoing the whole floor. See also: Localized Epoxy Floor Repair: Patching and Recoating Individual Areas
Workshop zoning: machining, assembly, storage and walkways
A mechanical workshop should be clearly zoned on the floor: a machining zone for machines, an assembly zone that needs a clean and even floor surface, a storage zone for workpieces and finished products bearing pallet loads, and walkways separated from areas where machines are operating. Zone line marking helps trolleys and pedestrians from straying into hazardous areas around machines, and at the same time helps cleaning and wear inspection to be carried out zone by zone. See also: Line Marking and Zone Painting for Factory Floors As a general principle, machining areas and walkways subject to high abrasion may consider a roller-applied system with good surface durability, while assembly areas needing an even flat surface may consider a self-levelling system. Kadier’s coating systems include the RollCoat system and the LevelFlow system; which system suits each specific area of a workshop must be checked against the official technical data sheet (TDS) of that system and the substrate survey results of that workshop, and cannot be inferred from this article.
Maintenance: cleaning schedule and wear inspection
Maintenance of a mechanical workshop floor should include daily cleaning of swarf and oil, periodic deep cleaning by a method suited to the coating, and inspection of machine feet, walkways and washing areas for signs of wear, edge peeling or long-standing oil staining. See also: Epoxy Floor Maintenance and Cleaning Done Right and Standard Epoxy Flooring Installation Process, from Survey to Handover.
Scope note: the content above describes the general characteristics of epoxy materials and flooring systems, with TCVN 9014:2011 and TCVN 12574-2018 as the reference framework where relevant. This article does not publish technical specifications, load-bearing levels, abrasion-resistance levels, drying times or test results specific to any particular Kadier coating system; those figures apply only when the official technical data sheet (TDS) of the product and the specific project is available.
Featured image: Daniel Smyth on Pexels.
