Choosing the floor is actually choosing the base material. The floor base material accounts for more than 90% of the whole floor component (calculated by solid), and the base material accounts for about 70% of the cost structure of the whole laminate floor. The price and supply of wood resources are the core factors of substrate cost. In addition, the cost of the base material is different due to the difference of its material components and the use of adhesives, so as to the difference of processing technology and equipment.
Generally, the base material can be divided into qualified products, first-class products and excellent products according to its grade, and can be divided into E2 and E1 according to the health grade. The excellent E1 base material is the best base material; The cost of finished products of different grades varies greatly. High grade base materials not only have high cost, but also have relatively small output due to high requirements for production process and equipment. According to the current national standards, among the 17 main comprehensive performance indexes of laminate flooring, 15 are related to the substrate. The quality of the substrate determines the grade of laminate flooring, most performance indexes and the comprehensive service life of the product. Common problems such as impact resistance, moisture resistance and dimensional stability of products are closely related to the quality of substrate.
From the national sampling results, more than 70% of the reasons for the unqualified laminate flooring are caused by the quality of the substrate. In order to reduce costs, some manufacturers use inferior raw materials and backward production processes to process black core base materials. The remarkable feature of black core base materials is that they use some raw materials that are not suitable for floor base materials, such as non-uniform tree species, and take bark, sawdust, etc. as raw materials of base materials. Such base fibers cannot achieve due physical and mechanical properties in the pressing process, The comprehensive performance is not qualified at all. The cost of the substrate made of such raw materials is far lower than that of the correctly selected substrate products. The black core substrate not only fails to meet the physical and mechanical properties, but also has no way to consider the health quality.
First, the density is good. The density of substrate affects the physical and mechanical properties of products and directly affects the quality of floor. The national standard requires the density of floor ≥ 0.80g/cm3. Identification tips: feel the weight of the floor with your hands. Through the comparison of the weight of the two floors, good floors generally have high density and heavier hand feeling; Good floor substrate particles are uniform without mottled color and feel hard, while poor floor substrate particles are rough, with different colors and hairy chirps.
The second is the thickness expansion rate of water absorption. The water absorption thickness expansion rate reflects the moisture-proof performance of the product. The lower the index, the better the moisture-proof performance. In the current national standard of laminate flooring, the water absorption thickness expansion rate is required to be ≤ 2.5% (superior products). Identification tips: soak a small piece of floor specimen in normal temperature water for 24 hours to see the thickness expansion. The quality of small expansion is better.
High quality substrates shall have the following characteristics:
First of all, the wood must be fresh enough without rotten wood and too much bark. "Otherwise, the wooden advantages of wood fiber will be reduced, the floor strength is not enough, and the service life will be shortened.". Secondly, to ensure that the density of different wood raw materials used is close, it is best to use a single wood species. In order to better control the purity and freshness of wood species, it is best for the production enterprise to build in the wood growth place and select fixed tree species, so as to ensure the unified physical properties and consistent mechanical processing properties of wood fibers for manufacturing wood flooring. With such conditions, wood flooring can have more stable quality.
