LVT——a kind of vinyl flooring, now is worldwide popular products because of it’s environmental-friendly and health protection character, easy to install could be done by personally handling, good quality LVT flooring with wear layer cause to water proof, scratch proof and longer lifetime comes compare to laminate flooring.
All producing process of LVT flooring without formaldehyde, it’s widely used in Europe and America area, now it’s becoming popular in China, Asia, Middle East and etc.
Material
What materials and how much content for LVT producing lines?
LVT machine produce LVT layers with mainly material Polyvinyl Chloride powder and Calcium powder, content percentage is PVC powder: Calcium powder=1:3, and reasonable content of accessory ingredients as stabilizer, black carbon, and DOTP oil.
Polyvinyl Chloride powder and Calcium powder are main capacity of SPC flooring material, content percentage is PVC powder: Calcium powder=1:3, and reasonable content of accessory ingredients as stabilizer, black carbon, and DOTP oil.Calcium powder doesn’t insoluble in water but soluble in acids, in order to increase opacity and flexibility. Require standards of 200-250 mesh for LVT flooring, reasonable whiteness and humidity>90%. More content of Calcium will increase board hardness and decrease flexibility and increase shrinkage.
DOTP oil: Almost colorless low viscosity liquid, because PVC itself is a hard material, add plasticizer, plastic products can be soft, easy to bend, fold, good elasticity and easy to shape.Mainly used for LVT, which helps increase flexibility.
Stabilizer: Slow down the reaction, maintain chemical balance, and reduce surface tension, prevent light, thermal decomposition or oxidation reactions, cause to final products quality more stable. Besides, materials composition done by stabilizer fusion, also play a shaping role. If quality not good, shaping will not be good enough cause to board easy broken, increase producing difficulty, and decrease capacity.
Black carbon is the pigments with the strongest coloring and hiding power. Most stable pigments, heat, chemical and light resistance, different quality cause to color effect different.
Accessory EPC401, as lubricants for extrude all kinds of powder evenly.
Styles & Standards
LVT structure: Wear layer, UV coating, decorative film, middle core, bottom core, IXPE back film.
Wear layer: Main purpose is for longer lifetime of 5-10 years, scratch resistance, wear layer for high quality flooring standards. Material of LVT wear layer manufactures is pure PVC material, with DOTP oil, higher flexibility and less density than Chloride, high tension and high shrinking to keep flooring balance to avoid bending for LVT. LVT wear layer producers could customize thickness depends on customer request, also depends on core thickness of board material. 0.1 mm-1.0 mm wear layer are reasonable, 1.0 mm wear layer resistance could be 20000 cycles. 0.3 mm, 0.5 mm, is regular thickness.
Decorative film: PVC material, most problem is to control color stability, thickness normal 1.0 mm.
LVT middle core:
Color grey black; Width max 1.3 mm; Thickness min 0.7 mm max 1.5 mm. Middle core thickness match according to final flooring board thickness.
Density 1.95-2.05 g/cm³; Hardness 60±2 for commercial, 68±2 for lock.
Purpose of middle core: Compare to bottom core, higher density less tension and less shrinking, for controlling balance of bottom core and wear layer avoid bending.
Bottom core:
Color black; Width max 1.3 mm; Thickness min 0.7 mm max 1.5 mm. Bottom core thickness match according to wear layer thickness.
Density 1.6-1.8 g/cm³; Hardness 54±2 for commercial, 64±2 for lock.
Purpose of bottom core: Higher flexibility, higher tension, less density, not easy to be broken, and fix with middle core could control avoid bending.
Fiber glass: is the material will not be affected by the environment shrinkage and expansion,mainly used to increase the toughness of the floor, as well as cooling and high temperature on shrinkage and warping has a certain control effect. Loose lay have to contain fiber glass.
LVT flooring designs: vinyl locking, dry back, loose lay.
Dry back is also called glue down, thickness 1.5-3 mm.
Click: over 3.5 mm thickness.
Loose lay: without glue or click, tile on ground directly.
How to produce LVT with LVT machines produce lines?
LVT machine produce lines formed by one-forming steps:
A, Screw extrude machine, extruding under high temperature 180℃ forming LVT core board.
B, Press: Wear layer, decorative film, middle core, bottom core, made to press with press plates, under 125-135℃ temperature, with 600 t pressure and press 40 mins(2 mm)-60 mins(5 mm) ,could make normal and EIR textures.
C, UV coating 10-12 g/㎡ for mat gloss level normal 5-8 degree, with process of preheating → bottom painting → semi-curing → surface painting → UV advection → full cure treatment → hot water → cold water → output. Temper process for enforce shrinkage and expansion control.
D, Cooling for 48 h, for flooring to adapt to environment of temperature, moisture content, humidity, for balance in case bending during next step, some in order to make it more stable, would cool for 72 h.
E, Cutting, grooving and IXPE back film applying, Inspection and packing.
