Battery Maker’s Floor Gets A Recharge

By  Jack Innis

Photos courtesy of Industrial Floor Coatings, Inc.

The parent inside Tom Means just about flipped when he first saw the inside of the battery manufacturing facility. AAs, AAAs, Cs, and Ds stacked five feet high on pallets. “It was amazing,” Means said. “There would be rack after rack of these pallets.” Enough to power a generation of battery-using kids into the next millennium.

But the crew-manager-turned-technical-sales-representative inside Tom Means knew there was a tough task ahead for his company, Industrial Floor Coatings, Inc. (IFC). 

The job was to remove, then recoat, 63,000 square feet of old flooring. Inside a six day window. For a Japanese client company deeply fearful of dust and chemical fumes.

IFC would tackle this job at Matsushita Ultra Tech Battery Corp., a factory producing Panasonic batteries in popular sizes. The Columbus, Georgia plant – commonly referred to as Mutec – opened in 1989, but the floor being replaced was about eight years old. “It had held up well but was worn out and coming up in places,” Means said.

The color specified for the floor was green, but that posed no particular problem, since the job had been handed to IFC by Tnemec, which specified their Series 281 Tnemec-Glaze pre-pigmented in the appropriate shade of green.

“You’ll find the vast majority of Japanese plants have green floors,” Means said, referring to cultural traditions. IFC and its parent company, Floor Tech, Inc. should know. Their “Valued Customer” list includes Japanese-owned Nissan and Kawasaki, as well as Caterpillar, Trane, John Deere, and Harley-Davidson Motorcycles.
“Our biggest concern going into the job was to convince Mutec that IFC could do the job on time, without unduly disturbing production,” said Means.

The 63,000 square-foot job equaled about 30 percent of the 200,000 square foot facility, and the operators did not want to sacrifice much of their production capacity for the sake of a flooring job. As is often the case with manufacturing companies, the cost of the flooring is not the most expensive part of the job. Idling the plant is. “In this case, the biggest cost to the client was not the flooring, but the loss of manufacturing time,” Means explained.

To stay within the specified downtime window, IFC proposed a scenario in which Mutec would juggle production from one area to another. In addition, the proposal would allow IFC to work in unused spaces adjacent to Mutec’s workers who would remain at their manufacturing stations.

But Mutec balked.

“Initially Mutec did not want to free up the unused work space throughout the plant,” Means said. “They were afraid that our workers might kick up chemical odors, gas, or dust which could lead to an evacuation of all 400 plant employees and a total plant shutdown.” 

IFC assuaged those fears by showing how their VIC International diamond grinder with debris and dust containment system could remove the old flooring without producing dust, gas, or odors. IFC promised they would not use an acid wash or other chemicals on the job.

Once IFC proved they had the capacity to do the project within their available window, they got the green light from Mutec for the green floor. More than four months had elapsed between the project specifications being drawn up and the contract signing. Clearing all the hurdles to secure a new client had been worth it, and work was set to begin.

Mutec finally opened their doors to IFC with one final word of warning: “Do not call us the day before the scheduled job completion and tell us the floors are not ready to work on.”

The work window allowed six days to do the job. Four weekdays followed by a weekend. IFC crews are used to working strange hours; in fact, some live for it. “When I’m hiring a new guy into the coatings field,” Means said, “I tell him up front that he’s going to work oddball hours, about 40 weekends a year, and most holidays.”

One applicator, a well-schooled fellow with an advanced degree in mathematics, actually told Means that if he had the choice between laying down a floor on a holiday and having dinner with a bunch of relatives, he’d take the flooring job. “I’d rather be out playing golf with my buddies the next two days while everyone else is back at the office,” the fellow said.

IFC tapped a six-man crew, headed by foreman Pat Hayes. “Pat is a great company asset,” Means said. “He started more than 20 years ago when he was so young we couldn’t get him a certificate to drive some of the big rigs we use. He’s great at working around clients’ problems.”

As it turned out there were only a couple of minor schedule changes. One area didn’t get shut down in time and another area had to come back on line 16 to 20 hours early. “Pat’s really good at working those things out with companies,” Means said.

Working with the Vic International diamond grinder, the crew removed the old flooring using carbide tipped stars and industrial diamond segments. Since the grinder actually polished the surface smooth – too smooth for 16 mils of epoxy – IFC brought in a Blastrac shot-blasting machine. The shot-blaster’s rotating impeller flung the steel shot down against the floor and back up into a recovery bin that collected dust, dirt, and debris. It left a profile sufficient for the particular slab, coating system and usage, Means noted.

“The degree of preparation depends of the thickness of the coating,” Means said. “With 16 mils of 100 percent solid epoxy, you need profiling. On thinner coatings, an acid wash is okay, but that’s not enough for a coating that thick.”

After shot-blasting came intensive sweeping and dust removal.

The spec sheet called for Tnemec Series 281 Tneme-Glaze Hi-Solids, Hi-Build Epoxy Glaze, pre-pigmented in the desired shade of green.

The liquid coating was poured out in six-inch-wide ribbons and squeegeed back and forth. Once spread out, the Tnemec 281 was distributed again with 18-inch mohair paint rollers. “Even though the coating was self-leveling, the back-rolling helps level it out to uniform thickness.”
IFC was able to apply one 16-mil coating instead of two eight-mil layers. “It came out as smooth as a ceramic coffee cup,” Means said.

By the time the IFC crew packed their equipment and left the factory on Sunday, the entire team – from applicator to sales representative – had logged more than 700 hours on the project. Now, when the next call from the battery maker comes, IFC will be fully charged and ready.
 

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