Whether you want to achieve a glass-like finish on a commercial floor or simply smooth your garage to a soft sheen, you need to use a concrete floor polishing machine to get the results you want. It’s not a complicated process – Polishing concrete is a similar idea to sanding down a wood surface. You use an abrasive material to grind away blemishes and gradually reduce the abrasion as the surface becomes smoother and shinier.

However, it’s more involved than simply running a grinder over the same area until it’s shiny. To help you get the best results that will last, we’re walking you through how to use a floor polishing machine.

Getting the Tools for the Job

Your first step is to ensure you have the tools for the job – not only do you need a floor grinder, you’ll also need:

Once you have these, you’ll want to assess your concrete floor to choose the right pads. If your concrete is soft, meaning it scratches easily when you run a nail across it, you’ll want to use a hard bond. If it’s a hard surface, you’ll want to go with a soft bond.

Similarly, the more textured or rough your concrete is, the more coarse of a diamond you’ll choose, similar to the grit of sandpaper. Highly textured or rough surfaces may require a 30 grit.

Using the Concrete Floor Polisher

Before you begin operating the polisher, you need to put the right disc on it by tilting the machine backwards and inserting the disc according to the user manual’s guidelines. Then, you’ll want to have a plan in place for keeping the dust down – either connecting a dust collector to automatically vacuum up excess dust or using water which will create a slurry.

Walk behind floor polishers have adjustable handles to provide a more comfortable, easy-to-maneuver experience – be sure to check the user manual for the exact location and method of adjusting the handle.

To begin grinding and polishing the floor, you will want to start on one corner and move forward, arc-ing the grinder in a slightly back and forth motion to level the floor as you grind it smooth.

Achieving a Polished Finish

After one or two passes with the more abrasive grit, you’ll want to change to a finer grit. Between each pass, you’ll want to clean up any dust or debris left behind that could cause gouges or scratches into the slab. You’ll move to a 60 grit followed by a 120 grit, and after that pass, you will want to clean the slab of any debris and dirt and apply a densifier to the slab. A densifier reacts with the calcium in the substrate and creates a harder, more scratch and chip resistant finish.

Again, it’s important to use your best judgement as to where you need to start versus where you want to finish. If you are simply maintaining a polished floor, you can start at a finer grit, whereas a damaged floor will need more abrasion.

After the 120 grit diamonds and using the densifier, you can start polishing with a resin or diamond impregnated polishing pad in the following grit:

  • 200
  • 400
  • 800
  • 1500
  • 3000
  • Buff

A 3000 grit and buff are used to achieve the mirror-like shine, whereas a 1500 will help you achieve a soft sheen.

Contact Us for Floor Polishing Equipment

Whether you need diamond pads and densifier or you need a new floor polishing machine, we can help. Contact our customer service team to get the best price on equipment and get your questions answered when you call us today at  (815) 324-8071 or by fill out our contact form