"After changing our headquarters to the bomb proof Saxony in the second world war, the nationalisation in 1972, the reprivatisation and a return to the former owners in 1990 after the Wall fell, the name has been FG Maschinenbau GmbH since 1996," explains Mr Kirchner. "FG has been producing professional parquet sanders mainly for the COMECON–markets since 1950. Precise manufacturing, the use of high-quality components and strict quality control and testing today ensure that every sander is and will be a machine for everyday use, a true partner of the craftsman."

Friedrich Kirchner took over part of the shares of a partner in 2007, who has since retired.
"In 2007 I took over 90% of the shares, since 2020 all the shares are mine. Currently, we have ten employees, 70% of production goes to exports worldwide and we expect sales of 1.8 million euros this year," Mr Kirchner continues. "Since I took over in 2007, I have always stood for important investments in high-quality production, research and development. The set up of a global sales network was the second part of the restructuring strategy. At the moment, you can find us almost anywhere in the world, including Australia and the USA, where we have our own company in Syracuse.”

At the beck and call of the craftsman
The dossier is specifically about the dangers of dust. Floortec responds to the control of dust with both traditional and innovative machines. This is at the beck and call of every professional.
"The most important thing we have learned is that we operate in a traditional world," we hear. "Craftsmen are generally conservative and have clear requirements for their machines: they must be simple and reliable and you must be able to maintain them yourself. We respond to this by marketing machines with a clear morphology.”

“To get back to the dust containment issue, all the FG sanding machines and edgers can be connected to a dust extraction system. FG presents here a solution composed by an efficient and sturdy cyclonic pre-separator made of sheet steel, that eliminates 95 % of the dust and a heavy duty vacuum cleaner class M with an impressive suction pressure of 410 mbar and a special pocket filter. This system is specially designed for use with machines that sand very fine wood. The current problem of constipated filters is avoided by using the new pocket filter with 26 pockets."

"We should not forget, that wood dust is allergenic and therefore harmful to health. That's why we aim for maximal dust extraction, by supplying a sturdy and reliable technology easy to use.

The craftsman often is alone on the worksite, or has only a few collaborators. Big vacuum cleaners are difficult to move and to transport. Therefore, we work on making the material very easy to manipulate, not too big and not too heavy. We found the solution in dust extractor and pre-separator mounted on a trolley, that the parquet installer pulls behind him and that is very handy when used on the job site. On a small, barely 80 cm high trolley with 4 wheels, 2 frontals of them swiveling and with brakes, we placed a dust extractor and a cyclonic separator. We made the whole thing foldable, so that everything can be easily stored in the car or van of the professional. The latter also falls under the central policy of our company: make life as easy as possible for the professionals on site, but never forget the simplicity, reliability and manageability of your products.

Future belongs to the multidisc
Of course, we would also like to hear from this specialist how he sees the future of dust extraction technology. Mr Kirchner is clear about this: dust extraction is becoming the standard as people are more conscious about their health. Looking on the evolution of sanding machines, there is a clear trend towards multidisc machines and this has consequences for dust extraction:

"This is also related to the evolution of the people who are active in the market. There are less and less trained professionals who can handle the rather complicated machines with belts, which can cause considerable damage to modern parquet when used badly. That is why I see the evolution towards multidisc machines, especially because they are less aggressive. There are also new abrasives, for example diamond-based, which work very efficiently and are much less complicated to use. In fact, the multidisc represents the democratisation of sanding and offers machines that are suitable for people who are less expert in wooden floors."

"Those multidiscs have other advantages. For example, there is less work on the edges. With belt sanders you always have to take into account a certain dimension around which one has to move, but a multidisc gets to within 1cm of the wall. We made comparisons between belt sanders and multidiscs and got aware, that the multidisc is even faster. When using diamond tools for coarse sanding, the time for belt changing is about zero and this makes a big gain of time.”

“The consequences: multidisc machines cannot use the classic suction system used on belt sanders, with a highspeed fan and fabric dust bag. There is simply no means to make this system run, because the motor is turning slow and the abrasives too. The machines must be connected with an efficient dust containment to reduce the dust emission. FG has optimized the dust containment on their multidisc machine and with the FG DUSTREK created a dust containment unit on wheels. This is a perfect instrument to control dust emission on the flooring worksite.”