JPH0421583B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION FIELD OF INDUSTRIAL APPLICATION This invention relates to floor tiles, in particular floor tiles with a non-directional pattern.

PRIOR ART Although US Pat. No. 2,663,663 is not directed to a method for making tiles, this patent discloses the addition of crushed marble to a thermosetting synthetic resin laminate. In this case, the crushed marble is not added to create a pattern, but to provide a rough surface.

US Pat. No. 3,145,241 relates to a floor covering with a non-directional pattern. The pattern is obtained by defining a large number of granules added to the base.

US Pat. No. 2,624,068 relates to non-directional patterns in floor coverings, which compress the particles in two perpendicular directions to prevent anisotropy.

U.S. Pat. No. 3,194,856 relates to non-directional patterns in floor coverings by using one hot roll and one cold roll with the cold roll in contact with the particles. You can get it.

US Pat. No. 2,995,179 uses crushed limestone as a filler in tiles, but does not disclose its use as a decorative material.

Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 2,120,281 discloses the use of a hard silica gel that is subsequently vulcanized in a rubber battery separator, but the silica gel is not included for decorative purposes. do not have.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a synthetic (or composite) tile consisting of a primary colored filled plastic material having a thermoplastic binder system and a filler. The tile is formed into a flat sheet, one side of which becomes the wear surface, ie the side facing upward from the tile when it is installed on the floor. The tile has multiple particles distributed on its surface, ranging in size from 10 to 60 mesh. Those particles are
It is a contrasting color to the primary coloring of the plastic material, and is circular rather than elongated. The particles are essentially marble particles that are not stretched (or oriented in a particular direction) during calendering to form them into floor tiles.

The method for manufacturing the tile product consists of forming a plastic material (lump) filled with marble particles, forming the material into a sheet, and cutting the sheet into a size of approximately 30 x 30 cm. The large number of marble particles that appear on the surface of the tile product are not stretched during calendering and appear as dots of contrasting color on the surface of the tile product.

EXAMPLES The tile products of the present invention are made in a manner very similar in principle to that disclosed in prior art US Pat. No. 2,995,179. The materials are mixed in a vigorous mixer such as a Banbury mixer, dropped into a sheeting mill, passed through hot calendar rolls to form sheets of final thickness, and cut to the desired tile dimensions.

A typical composition used is that of the formulation shown below. Ingredients Weight % Resin: Mixture of 33% by weight of vinyl chloride and 67% by weight of a 90-10% blend of polyvinyl chloride and polyvinyl acetate 13.6 Ground limestone (40 mesh or less) 71.6 Colored marble (10-60 mesh) 8.0 Plasticizer (di-octyl-phthalate) 4.5 Processing aid (alpha-methyl-styrene) 1.0 Stabilizer (melamine-based with metal soap)
0.8 Pigment (titanium oxide) 0.5 100.0 The raw materials are charged in a standard manner to a vigorous mixer such as a Banbury. All colored marble particles are
Add after all other ingredients are mixed. The color of the marble is a contrast color to the pigment color of the tile product. The material was then used in U.S. Patent No.
No. 2995179 and is sheeted in a conventional manner as shown in US Pat. No. 2,995,179.

The uniqueness of the final product is the non-directional tile pattern. Calendering does not elongate the marble particles to give elongated lines on the final product as in common tiling operations when the contrasting colored particles are soft thermoplastic materials. Products made with the present invention are made with rather uniform dots or circular contrasting color spots, and the products actually contain relatively black pepper powder on a white or light colored tile-based surface. Very similar to evenly distributed. Tile products with stretched lines have a directional property in which the tiles extend in the stretching direction. However, since there are no stretched lines, our tiles
It can rotate in any of the four quadrants, and its dot pattern does not appear directional.

The dot pattern in the final product can be accentuated by sanding its surface to remove anywhere from 0.005 to 0.025 cm in thickness. Although it is desirable to polish the surface of the product to emphasize the dotted pattern, this is not necessary to ensure a clean pattern on the tile surface.

Plastic particles can also be used in the present invention, but the plastic particles must be sufficiently hard to avoid streaking during coloring.

A hard plastic resin that can be used in place of the marble particles is a resin such as Bakelite, which has a "Shore D" hardness of about 82.

The preferred particulate material used is marble particles having a size such that they pass through a 10 mesh sieve but not a 60 mesh sieve.
This is called a grain size of 10 to 60 mesh. The mesh hole rating is the American standard sieve rating used for particle size identification.

The marble particles can be uniformly distributed throughout the sheet or concentrated primarily in the surface layer of the sheet. The particles can be made as a separate layer added to the base layer or heated after first being milled and then passed through a calendering process which tends to embed the stone particles in the top surface of the sheet product. It can be concentrated in a surface layer created as a layer spread over the sheet.

The term "marble particles" generally refers to all stone particles having a Mohs hardness of 2.5 to 3.5.

During the milling operation, the separation force of the rolls is approximately 3.2 tons/min as the plastic material is formed into sheets.
Provides in-width pressure. Even with this amount of pressure applied, the hard particles do not stretch in a directional pattern.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. A synthetic tile consisting of a primary colored filled plastic material having a thermoplastic binder system and a filler, in the form of a flat sheet, one side of which is a wear surface, comprising: 10 A composition characterized in that a plurality of particles of ~60 meshes are distributed on the wear surface of the tile, the particles have a contrasting coloration to the plastic material, and have a non-directional, non-stretched shape in the final product. tile. 2. A composite tile according to claim 1, wherein the particles are uniformly distributed throughout the tile product. 3. A synthetic tile according to claim 1, characterized in that the particles are mainly distributed in the parts of the synthetic tile near the wear surface. 4. Claim 1, wherein the particles have a Mohs hardness in the range of 2.5 to 3.5.
Composite tiles as described in section. 5. A composite tile according to claim 1, characterized in that the particles are marble chips. 6. A synthetic tile according to claim 1, wherein the particles are a plastic resin having a Shore D hardness of about 82. 7. A method for producing a synthetic tile made of a thermoplastic material containing a primary colored filler and having a thermoplastic binder system and a filler, characterized by comprising the following steps (a), (b) and (c): (a) mixing the thermoplastic binder system and the filler together in conventional mixing equipment; (b) imparting to the plastic material the color of the thermoplastic material at a time prior to removal of the plastic material from the mixing equipment; and (c) die-dying the plastic material from the mixing device into a calendering device to form the plastic material into a sheet and forming the sheet into a plurality of square tiles. Process of forming into units.