Influência da granulometria abrasiva #600 no polimento de porcelanatos com diferentes formulações

Abstract

Porcelain stoneware tiles have major importance among the ceramic floor tiles, since their development provided products of excellent technical and aesthetic quality. To improve its characteristics, the porcelain tile is subjected to a polishing process, which besides complexity and importance, has a high consumption of water, energy and abrasives. Beyond the technological performance, there is also a trend towards the use of sustainable coatings through the reuse of industrial wastes. In the case of polished porcelain tiles, obtaining the glossiness gain curve in the polishing process is necessary both to guide the improvement of the polishing operation and to validate the incorporation of industrial wastes in the mass formulation. This Master Thesis aims at both purposes. In order to achieve this, glossiness gain curves were obtained with and without the addition of red ceramic waste (Chamotte, or also grog), while considering the variation of the industrial polishing route. For all tests, the polishing sequence will normally follow abrasive #36 to #400, followed by three different polishing routes up to # 800 abrasive. After abrasives were passed, the influence of the route variation was evaluated by measuring the glossiness and surface roughness of the samples. The results demonstrated the applicability of the chamotte porcelain tile that obtained final glossiness responses on average 16.8% higher than the standard porcelain. It was possible to verify that, within the parameters used, there was no significant influence of the polishing route variation. As consequence, it is possible to omit abrasive #600 without significant aesthetic loss.