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Advertising supplement provided by Domco Tarkett Commercial

The Manufacturing Process

All vinyl products are made from combinations of vinyl resin and various additives that give these products their particular properties. The additives commonly used in vinyl flooring include:

Plasticizers, oily liquids that are used to soften the vinyl and provide flexibility to the formula.
Stabilizers, used to minimize degradation and discoloration from heat and light.
Pigments, which are added during the manufacturing process to give vinyl a range of colors.
Fillers, such as limestone or clay.
Processing/fabricating. Once additives have been combined with resin, the resulting material is called vinyl compound, and is in pellet form. The nature of the vinyl compound allows versatility in the production process, enabling manufacturers to meet many of the performance requirements of various flooring applications. In the next stage of manufacturing, either vinyl tile or sheet vinyl flooring is created.

Vinyl tile is manufactured by one of two methods: either by melt-compounding the ingredients at high temperatures, then molding the hot material into the desired shape, or through a “calendering” process by which components are mixed together then fed through a series of rollers that gradually squeeze the material to a desired gauge. Finished sheets are most commonly 1/8-in. thick, but are also made 1/16 or 3/32-in. thick.

Although the total process and product raw materials will vary depending on the type of tile being produced, solid vinyl tile and printed vinyl tiles in general contain a much higher content of vinyl and less filler than vinyl composition tile (VCT).

Sheet vinyl is produced by a variety of methods that may include printing, inlaid chips or liquid coatings that may or may not be on a carrier sheet. This may or may not produce a multi-layered construction. Most product is then cured in an oven and may or may not be coated with a thin film of urethane or other specialty topcoats, including acrylics, paste layers, or chips.

Patterns are applied to some sheet vinyl flooring using a rotogravure printing method, in which colors and patterns are printed on the surface of the base layer, or through an inlaid method, in which the design goes all the way to the backing. With rotogravure, a rotating cylinder prints colored inks on top of the core layer, offering virtually unlimited possibilities in patterns and designs. The printed pattern is covered with a clear vinyl wear layer and the product is oven-cured. In the inlaid process, solid-colored vinyl chips are laid on top of a carrier sheet and then bonded together, under heat and pressure, creating the resulting pattern.