Wood or laminate flooring system comprising a plurality of floor panels

(54) (56) (57)

PATENT INVENTOR INVENTOR'S OFFICE DESIGNATION CALLED PUBLICATIONS SUMMARY:

Tony Perväii, 32

Tony Pervåh, Solna SE Pervan D

Grout for thin liquid hard floors

171 72 Solna SE

Grout for thin liquid hard floors. By an appropriate fit of the frame in laminates, high-performance compact laminate floors that are only 3-4 mm thick can be made. The problem is that there is no suitable method for joining thin hard floorboards with concealed grouting systems to floating floors. This problem has been solved by making grooves (3) on the underside of the boards and long sides of the floorboards where a strip (4) is attached to one of the floorboards (1), after which the other floorboards (2) are laid on the protruding part of the strip. Through a special design of grooves, strips and joints, flooring can be done with glue, double-adhesive tape or mechanical locking that allows the floorboards to be taken apart without being damaged and reused.

The numbers in brackets indicate international identification code, INID code. Letters in clamps indicate international document code.

501 014

The present invention relates to a device for bonding thin liquid hard floors with adhesive, double-adhesive tape or mechanical locking and combinations thereof, consisting of grooves in the underside of the floorboards and a loose or fixed strip enabling a fast, concealed, liquid, precise and high-strength joint thin floorboards regardless of its thickness tolerances. Since the floorboards can be joined together without glue, they can be disassembled without being damaged and reused.

Background of the invention.

Laminate flooring has in a short time taken up a large part of the market for renovation floors. All thin laminate floors, which are laid as so-called. floating floor without attachment to the substrate, consists of a surface layer of decorative laminate, a board or chipboard carrier and a balance layer of laminate or impregnated paper. The floorboards are usually 200 * 1200 mm and its long and short sides are designed as groove and tongue. The floor is laid by applying glue to the groove and the floorboards are pressed and joined together.

The laminate, which consists of a wear and tear layer of melamine and a body of phenol, has very good properties in terms of durability, impact resistance and water resistance. The weak point of the floor is the support which has considerably inferior properties than the laminate, but which is needed for stability and, above all, to provide a joint with groove and tongue. This requires a thickness of at least 7 mm. This is a disadvantage because the thinner the floor, the easier it is to cope with low thresholds. The laying method is also cumbersome and time-consuming as glue must be applied to each note.

The above drawbacks can be eliminated by removing the support and increasing the laminate thickness through a suitable modification of the phenol backbone. Such a compact laminate already has at 3 mm thickness better properties than the current laminate flooring. The laying would be greatly facilitated if double-sided tape or mechanical locking could be used. The problem is that none of the jointing methods

501 014 available today can be used on such thin floating floors. Note and tongue and moldings inserted in the material can not be used in thin sheets and especially not with double-sided tape.

Another problem is that compact laminates must be built up symmetrically, ie the top and bottom should consist of similar thermosets and fibers in order for the laminate sheets to be flat. The laminate panels have a thickness tolerance of about + 0.2 - 0.3 mm during manufacture. The discs cannot be made even thick by grinding the ίο of the back as the symmetrical structure is destroyed with the resultant stiffness. Various thick boards provide a very high load at the joint edge if designed in the traditional way.

The invention takes this into account and eliminates this load.

is Double-adhesive tape is a very suitable adhesive method in many contexts, but the problem is that it grips directly and does not provide the opportunity to adjust the discs as with normal gluing, since it is possible that after the adhesive is applied in the note, first compress the note and spontaneously at longitudinally and then slide the floorboard along the longitudinal side 20 so that also note and spontaneous at the short side join each other, after which the adhesive hardens. Another problem is that large plant area and relatively high intial pressure are required to provide high strength joints. Double-sided adhesive tape does not work in the jointing methods used today for floating floors. The invention enables floorboards to be joined to floating floors with double-sided adhesive tape or glue of similar kind.

Laying a floor with groove and groove is time-consuming and the laying quality is entirely dependent on the bonding. When a glued floor is to be removed, the joint system must be broken and the floorboards cannot be reused. These problems could be eliminated by replacing the adhesive with mechanical locking which provides sufficient strength in thin constructions and provides the opportunity to achieve a concealed and precise locking of both long and short sides. 35 There are currently no joint methods for floating floors that are based solely on concealed mechanical locking of all sides or such locking in combination with glue or tape. The invention makes this possible and since the floorboards can be mechanically joined together without glue, they can thus be taken apart in the reverse order as they have been laid.

501 014 quickly and easily without making any impact on the floorboards, while the quality of the installation can be guaranteed. The floorboards can be reused in the same way in another place as in the first installation. Installation and dismantling of the floorboards goes much faster than in current known systems and any damaged floorboards can be replaced by removing and restoring parts of the floor.

The object and the main features of the invention.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The object of the invention is to provide a device for concealed bonding of thin floor boards with thickness tolerances to high-strength floating floors in the joint and a tolerance-independent smooth upper surface in such a way that assembly can be done with adhesive, double-adhesive tape or mechanical locking and combinations thereof. The device enables quick and safe assembly as well as picking up and restoring of the floorboards. This task has been solved by having grooves arranged on the underside of the long and short sides of the floorboards in such a way that the distance from the surface of the floorboards to the track keeps a constant dimension which is slightly less than the minimum thickness of the floorboards. A groove of laminate, plastic, aluminum or other metal is applied in the groove with a thickness slightly greater than the difference between the thinnest and thickest floorboard. The strip is attached to the groove on the underside of one of the floorboards with adhesive, tape, mechanically or otherwise suitable so that with the long side it goes beyond the edge of the floorboard to form a support for the next board. The second floorboard is laid in place edge to edge with the groove on the protruding part of the strip. The floorboards always rest in the joint with the groove on the strip which takes up all the load in the joint and which transfers the downward vertical forces to existing subfloors. The top of the joint becomes completely flat regardless of the thickness tolerance of the floorboards and the floor flows without attachment to the substrate. By suitable design of grooves, strips and joint edges on long and short sides, laying can be done with glue, double-adhesive tape or mechanical locking and by combinations thereof.

<img file="SE501014C2_D0001.tif" />

<img file="SE501014C2_D0002.tif" />

<img file="SE501014C2_D0003.tif" />

Description of drawings.

Fig. 1 shows the joining of thin liquid hard floors with glue and double-sided adhesive tape.

Fig. 2 shows the jointing of thin liquid hard floors with glue and double-adhesive tape where seam edges are beveled for transfer of lifting force to shear force.

Fig. 3 shows the jointing of thin liquid hard floors with glue and double-adhesive tape where grooves are formed in joint edges for mechanical locking of upward movement.

Fig. 4 shows the jointing of thin liquid hard floors with mechanical locking in all directions.

Description of embodiments.

In the drawings in Figures 1-4, 1 denotes a floor slab of mint thickness, with 2 a floor slab of maximum thickness, with 3 grooves on the underside of floor slab, with 4 a strip of laminate, plastic, aluminum or other metal, with 5 a glue layer, with 6 floor board surfaces, with 7 beveled joint edges, with 8 grooves on the underside of the joint edge, with 9 grooves on the top of the joint edge, with 10 locking pins on the floor, with 11 locking grooves on the underside of the floorboard, with 12 beveled edge on the locking pin and with 13 existing subfloor.

501 014