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Stadco

Stadco are a major supplier of parts to Jaguar Land Rover, and as such certain areas of the factory operate very heavy duty machinery that press body panels. These areas are subject to major fork lift truck movement, and Stadco contacted Impact Flooring with a requirement to install pedestrian only gangways, for health and safety reasons, in a contrasting colour to the fork lift truck gangways, along with demarcation lines and pedestrian crossings across the fork lift areas.

The existing floor finish, which was used by both fork lifts and pedestrians, had been epoxy resin floor painted, in house, by the client on a regular basis, resulting in a finish that had received many coats over the years, was very thick in places and reasonably well bonded, but was also very poorly bonded and flaking off in other areas.

We therefore, in the first instance, needed to remove all of the existing epoxy coating, back down to clean concrete. Because of the thickness involved, we decided to use a BEF 320 planning machine. This is a very heavy duty machine, used under vacuum, which removes the existing finish quickly but leaves a fairly uneven finish. The second phase of the preparation, to then smooth out this uneven finish, was diamond grinding with our Innovotech four headed planetary grinders. Again used under vacuum to minimise dust, this phase was carried out resulting in an even finish.

Because of the nature of the clients work in this environment, the concrete had become fairly heavily contaminated with oil over a period of time and needed to be treated before any epoxy resin coatings could be installed. For this, we needed to install a specialist primer for oil contaminated surfaces. This material, when applied to contaminated concrete, reacts with the oil present in the slab and, during the curing process, penetrates into the surface of the slab and effectively locks in any oil that has penetrated below the surface. The effect of this primer is to leave a surface that will allow an excellent bond for the subsequent epoxy resin coating and prevent any future delamination of the system.

Because the existing epoxy resin coating to the gangways is a fairly dark green, the client opted for a very light grey finish to the pedestrian gangways to ensure a very obvious difference. As the new gangways are expected to endure quite heavy traffic, a high build epoxy resin coating, Resdev Pumatect, was specified and applied as a two coat system, giving an expected lifespan of three to five years under these conditions.

The new gangways were then allowed to cure overnight, before the installation of the resin demarcation lines could begin. Placements for the demarcation lines were marked out and masked off, and again a two coat epoxy resin system was chosen for maximum wear characteristics.

In addition to all of this, the client also required ‘Zebra’ crossings to areas where pedestrian gangways crossed over forklift areas, and to match other areas of the factory that we had previously refurbished, opted for yellow and green rather than the more traditional black and white. Again, placements for the crossings were marked out and masked off, and a further two coat epoxy resin system was applied to give the desired crossing effect.

Stadco required that the whole project should be completed during their shut down over the Christmas period, and Impact flooring began the works on the 27th December and put the finishing touches to the crossings on the morning of the 31st December, allowing ample curing time for the clients resumption of business on the 3rd January.

Impact were pleased to receive a telephone call on the morning of 3rd January from the clients maintenance manager – they are delighted with their new flooring and thanking our workforce for their efforts.