Floor Forum International spoke to two Husqvarna specialists, who immediately made it clear that they offer clients nothing but one-stop solutions. They also stress how the Experience Centre in Ath (B) plays an important part in the corporate philosophy because this is so much more than just yet another showroom. On the contrary, it’s a place where you see and try out all Husqvarna machines in realistic conditions. We spoke to Kris De Rudder, country manager of Husqvarna Construction Belgium and recently appointed as manager for all things related to surface and floor surface and floor treatment in the Benelux, and Ad Groenen. Ad Groenen makes his contribution as a man with over 30 years of specialist experience in the flooring industry. He now combines the know-how which he acquired at Blastrac and integrates this with the products and application options of Husqvarna. On to the machines covered by this subject, we start with the planetary sanding machine.

Planetary sanding machine
Ad Groenen: ‘If you want to remove thin layers, the planetary sander is ideal. You clean and roughen up the substrate so that the next layer adheres well. If you need to remove more, you need a different solution, such as planing or milling. Planing, in particular, is gaining in popularity because you actually plane the floor off, but more about that later.’
Kris De Rudder: ‘The planetary sander comes in a huge range, from smaller tools for residential applications to huge three-headed machines for larger surfaces inclusive.’
Ad Groenen: ‘When we talk to parquet floor fitters, we usually recommend the 230V machine. Obviously, however, there are heavier machines available for bigger projects, even with remote control. The nice thing about the planetary system is that you have one big disc, for instance, of 80cm. That has three or four small heads on it, which rotate left and clockwise. You can sandpaper well to get a very nice scratch pattern which you constantly refine by using other diamonds. That’s how you renovate the floor until you have a polished floor.’

Single-head sanding machines
The next machines in line are the single-head sanding machines with diamond. They also illustrate the Husqvarna one-stop philosophy perfectly.
Ad Groenen: ‘We can best zoom in on the single-head sanding machines, in contrast to planetary sanding machines. These are easy to deploy locally. An example: You want to lower a door opening by a few millimetres. You can do that locally without having to plane or mill. Moreover, they’re ideal for smaller surfaces and some machines can be dismantled.’
Kris De Rudder: ‘The latter is vital. It makes transport and availability easy and more accessible; think here of works on different levels. Husqvarna also makes a priority of ergonomics, and that benefits operators’ health. This also applies to machines like floor strippers, shot blasters, and such like.’

The floor plane machine
The next tool in line is the floor plane machine. Here you put a drum with diamond sheets into a drum casing. Once the machine is switched on, the drum rotates at high speed to saw off the surface.
Kris De Rudder: ‘The aim is to make the floor as flat as possible, hence the drum. What happens is that you literally plane material off.’
Ad Groenen: ‘What’s interesting is that you leave the substrate reasonably intact and get a flat base. And so, you remove concrete without a lot of noise and vibrations. This is completely different to milling, where you demolish the floor and make a lot of noise. A method like this is ideal in silent environments, such as in hospitals.’
Kris De Rudder: ‘A powerful vacuum cleaner is important with machines like this which are used on concrete. Moreover, your vacuum cleaner has to have continuous suction force. We can’t stress the importance of this vacuum cleaning enough, not only for the working environment itself, but certainly also for the operator’s health! We have all sorts of vacuum cleaners on offer. We supplement them with air purifiers, which also remove absolutely all very fine dust. At all events, we heartily recommend the combination of vacuum cleaner and air purifier.’

Shot blasters
We had mentioned dust-free work, but dust-free blasting did not come up in the conversation. Both gentlemen talked about shot blasters.
Ad Groenen: ‘This is a unique operation because it really is dust-free in combination with a good vacuum cleaner. This is ideal for roughening up bigger surfaces so the glue sticks better to the base.’
Kris De Rudder: ‘These machines use metal balls which blast against the concrete. They remove all remnants on the floor and roughen up everything. This yields a surface which is totally dust-free and rough. This application is highly profitable because you can treat big surfaces in no time at all.’
Ad Groenen: ‘You have to see shot blasters as a cheap way of roughening up dust-free. After the blasting, you can level any roughness and unevenness with a leveller. You always use shot blasters in combination with a vacuum cleaner with high suction and a high air flow. These vacuum cleaners work with continuous pneumatic filter purification. The filters are cleaned using an air pulse.’
Kris De Rudder: ‘What’s unique about this shot blasting is that you put recycling fully into practice. The blasted metal balls diminish in size after impact on the concrete, but thanks to the vacuum cleaner and a separator in the machine they are continually sucked up again and re-used. This process is repeated until the balls literally become so light that they are discharged together with ordinary dust. This material is used almost exclusively by professionals. Sound training is required in order to obtain the best possible results.’

Striving for a fully electric operation
We’ve discussed the most important machines, but nevertheless it’s interesting to consider briefly Husqvarna’s quest for a fully electric operation in the most popular categories by 2025. The use of petrol needs to be eliminated as soon as possible.
Kris De Rudder: ‘We already have a number of fully battery-powered portable tools and one ride-on carpet stripper and we’re going in that direction with the heavier machines as well. Our strategy is clear: electric and battery-operated. Recently, we’ve launched our K1 Pace cut-off saw, but also, for example, in the floor saws we’ve recently launched a floor saw with a diamond 600mm saw blade.’
‘I also want to stress once again here how much importance we attach to the ergonomics of the machines and the user’s health. We also have service programmes and I refer once again to our Fleet sensor system which provides good follow-up for all machines and that illustrates how committed Husqvarna is to connectivity.’

New web site launched
We also mention that as of the middle of October Husqvarna has launched a brand new web site: http://www.husqvarnaconstruction.com.

This new web site also includes a compendium which has a full list of the available range and can be downloaded free.