ln an apartment, Tiles are ideal as floors in sanitary areas and commercial spaces- or wall covering. Their processing requires special tools.
The variety of species, to shape, Colours, Formats and structures of ceramic tiles offer unlimited possibilities, Residential, Economic- and to equip work rooms according to practical requirements and to design them according to optical aspects. Compared to floor coverings such as carpet, PVC or wood floors have tiles, provided that the right material is chosen and properly installed, many advantages:
■ almost unlimited combination and design options,
■ great resilience,
■ high resistance to moisture and aggressive substances,
■ very good economy thanks to low maintenance- and maintenance costs.
The follow-up costs of a tiled floor amount to within a period of 20 Years on only about 25 Percentage of that of a synthetic surface of the same size.
Earthenware or stoneware
Who is facing the enormous range of tiles, should be aware of the fundamental difference in the range: A distinction is made between earthenware and stoneware tiles.
Earthenware tiles are sold at approx. 1050 Burned ° C. They remain porous, still absorb moisture and are therefore not frost-proof. This means they are only for indoor use, but not suitable as a floor tile in damp rooms. Stoneware tiles, on the other hand, have a higher proportion of quartz sand and are made at higher temperatures (1250 °C) burned. This makes the tile much denser, harder and frost-proof, since moisture can no longer penetrate into the material. However, this also has a disadvantage: Stoneware tiles are many times more brittle than stoneware tiles.
Break tiles
Tiles are made of different hardnesses, but always brittle material. They get their actual strength from the surface tension of the glaze. If this is canceled by scoring with a tile cutter, even the thickest tile can be broken along this tear line with relatively little effort. Tile cutting machines have an angled metal toggle on the movable cutting carriage, with which the tile is immediately after the scratch, without changing their position, can be broken.
Notches
Notches, starting from the edge of the tile, are easiest to make with a tile saw or nibbling tongs. The tile saw is an all-round one with hard metal- saw wire set with diamond splinters. With it, the sawing direction can be changed at any time without changing the saw blade. With the nibbling tongs, Also called a parrot's beak because of their shape, the notch is nibbled out in small pieces.
For cutouts with standardized cutout dimensions, for corner valves or sockets, for example, there are made-to-measure, carbide-tipped hole saws or punch tools. In the punching device, the tile is fixed between a metal ring corresponding to the cutout dimension and a toothed one, clamped funnel-shaped counter piece. This makes the tile so tensioned, that the cutout inside the ring can be knocked out with the tile hammer, without the tile cracking. With the adjustable tile hole cutter, openings from 20 to 94 Manufacture mm in diameter. It is driven by a drill with max. 400 Driven rpm.
Drill safely into tiles
Tiles are generally drilled without hammering. Due to their hardness and brittleness, they would burst on the third strike. So that the drill does not slip when it is applied and leave a track across the tile, the glaze must be pre-grained at the drilling site. Only carbide-tipped drills are used, Drilling is done at the lowest possible speed, until the glaze layer is penetrated. Then you can increase the speed.