The blade is the heart of a floor scraper and has a massive impact on its performance. No matter how remarkable the scraper might be, using a poor-quality or dull blade will cause the performance of the machine to suffer. Staying on top of this will help your machines get a lot more done in a work day. If you are looking for high end blades check out our full line of scraping blades here.
Signs it’s time to sharpen your floor scraper blade
As soon as a sharp blade hits the floor, it starts to become dull. We recommend sharpening your blade regularly throughout a job or having a large enough supply of blades on hand so you can just change them out during the workday and sharpen dull ones later. If you allow your blades to get too dull then you’ll start to notice a few things, including:
- The machine will need to work harder to push through material. Depending on how difficult the removal is you may even hear the machine bog down.
- On battery-powered machines, the spike in amperage draw will cause the batteries to deplete faster.
- Extra glue will start to be left on the floor as compared to a sharp blade
- The blade may start to “jump” on top of the material because it is not sharp enough to drive underneath it.
- This generally causes the operator to increase the angle of the blade, which makes it even more dull.
- When removing carpet, a dull self-scoring blade will not cut a clean strip out of the carpet. Instead, it will tear the carpet fibers, which makes cleaning messy and inefficient.
Once any of these issues start to pop up, it’s time to either sharpen your blade or swap it out with a sharp one. Resist the temptation to keep plowing on to “save time.” You will find that keeping your blade sharp (even though it requires a quick pit stop) will allow you to tear out more material during the work day than the guy who never takes the time to sharpen.
How to sharpen your blade
Here are a few tips for sharpening your blades!
Tools you will need:
- An angle Grinder or a bench grinder with a fresh 60 or 80 grit disk
- A 4X4 block
Step-by-step guide for sharpening your floor scraping machine’s blade:
- Use the 4×4 block to lift the head of the machine (walk-behinds)
- For riders or the ES 400S, place the 4×4 underneath the blade clamp to prevent it from rotating.
- Take your angle grinder and matching the original angle of the bevel, grind evenly across the length of the blade.
- Do not spend too much time in a single spot, or you will get divots in your blade edge.
- Take even/quick passes. If you move slowly with a large amount of pressure on the blade, it can become too hot, damaging the harness and causing it to dull faster. If the blade is turning colors, then it is too hot. Stop grinding and put some water on it to keep it cool.
- If you do a lot of sharpening, change out grinder pads regularly. This will make sharpening faster and will input less heat into the blade.
- Only remove material from the side of the blade with the bevel; do not grind on both sides of the blade.
- Once you are finished you may feel a slight burr on the bottom side of the blade. You can remove that burr with a very light pass with the grinder or (if it’s not too heavy of a burr) you can just start using it and the concrete subfloor will remove the burr for you.
CAUTION: When using an angle grinder, you want the rotation of the grinding pad to move from the back of the blade toward the front of the blade. The sparks should be flying away from the machine. If you see that the sparks are flying towards the machine that means your grinding pad is oriented so that it is rotating from the edge toward the back of the blade. This is dangerous because the pad could catch on the sharp edge and cause you to lose control of the grinder.
If you are using a bench grinder, remove the blade from the blade holder and then follow the same general steps outlined above. Again, be careful not to have the grinding wheel rotating into the sharp edge.
Getting started with Anderson Innovations
To learn more about our machines, check out our full line of Ride-On Floor Scrapers here and our Walk-Behind Floor Scrapers here. Ready to become an Anderson Innovations distributor or want to get connected with one? Let’s chat! Contact us today to get started.
