Digital Gloss Meter in Wood Flooring Industry

1. What is the gloss of the wooden floor surface?

Most of the wooden floors laid at home hope that it can keep the light and beauty. The light here is also the gloss we often say. Gloss is an attribute of the wooden floor surface, which depends on the specular reflection ability of the wooden floor surface to light. What is specular reflection? Specular reflection means that if the reflective surface is relatively smooth. When the parallel incident light hits the reflective surface, it will still be reflected in one direction in parallel. This reflection is a specular reflection. Wood floor glossiness is a physical quantity that evaluates the ability of a material's surface to reflect light under a set of geometrically specified conditions. Therefore, it expresses the reflective property with direction selection.

2. Is the wood floor shiny or not?

For the glossiness of wooden floors, the country does not have a clear numerical standard. In different scenes, it is suitable for wooden floors with different glossiness. The gloss of the wooden floor has its advantages and disadvantages:
      (1) The gloss of the wooden floor is bright. Advantages: bright, the disadvantage is that the places that go often and the places that go less often are more obvious
      (2) The gloss of the wood floor is matte. Advantages: the paint surface is soft and not dazzling. The floor is slightly flawed and can’t be seen. The places where you often walk for a long time and the places where you walk less are not obvious. There are basically no disadvantages.
      The simple way to judge the gloss of the wooden floor is to visually check it, pick up a sample of the floor and fiddle with it at different angles under good light. If there is an object shadow or a strong reflective feeling and it is very bright, it can be said that it is a bright type. The opposite is matte. It can also be distinguished from the feel, smooth and mirror-like hand touch without wood obvious texture is the light type. Otherwise, it is matte.
      However, this method is often affected by the viewing angle and light. Only wooden floors with large difference can be distinguished in gloss and cannot be expressed by digital visualization. For industries with stricter gloss requirements, a digital gloss meter is required.

3. How to measure the gloss of wooden floor?

The gloss can be evaluated using a gloss meter. It mainly depends on the angle of light source illumination and observation. The instrument measurement usually uses 20 °, 45 °, 60 ° or 85 ° angle illumination and the commonly used is the 60 ° angle.
      The surface roughness of furniture, paint and plastic products can be measured with a gloss meter and can be quantitatively expressed. At the same time, if the surface of these products has undergone a certain amount of wear, it can also be characterized by the change in gloss before and after wear. For the determination of the surface gloss of wood and wood coatings, refer to the national standard "Determination of the gloss of paint films on furniture surfaces" (GB 4893.6-85). A digital gloss meter was used for measurement. The measurement geometry was 60 ° specular reflection and the incident direction was parallel to the wood texture and perpendicular to the wood texture. The digital gloss meter LS191 can be used for measurement.
      The digital gloss meter LS191 has a measuring range of 0-200GU, with an accuracy up to the national first-class machine standard and 60 ° universal measuring angle. The biggest feature of this LS191 digital gloss meter is that it can intelligently count the maximum, minimum, average and standard deviation values during the test. Using this function, you can quickly analyze the uniformity of the glossiness of different positions of the same wooden floor.