For floor care professionals who rely on high-quality equipment to drive their business, there could not be a better time to upgrade. With an impressive selection of new ride on automatic scrubbers on the market today, consider your options before you submit your next big bid.
Ride-on floor machines come in an array of styles and varieties, and they are trending toward smaller machines with wider cleaning capacity. Of these newer machines, some are built efficiently enough to run on battery power, but few have mastered the combination of compact design and wireless performance. Traditionally, these battery-powered floor machines are quick, often completing an average cleaning cycle in less than half the time of conventional walk-behind scrubbers. This boost in productivity is welcome in an industry where time is money, but the machines can be bulky and difficult to maintain.
As with other battery-powered technologies, these machines must be large enough to house a number of heavy, bulky batteries. Mastercraft’s Sauber machines aim to reverse this trend by presenting more compact, maneuverable machines to the market. They feature a tight turning radius and a narrower chassis, allowing the machines to glide through hallways and corridors while cleaning right up to the edge of the flooring surface. They apply a heavy 160 pounds of brush pressure, but they are still stable with a four-wheel chassis. The true value of the machines is in their cleaning capacity. Self-adjusting brushes find the right position and level automatically, ensuring an even, efficient cleaning every time.
With technology advancing at such a rapid rate, floor care professionals are delighted to find other impressive innovations within their industry. Battery powered scrubbers and automatic floor scrubbers have been available for many years, but some manufacturers are taking these machines to a new level of sophistication.
Mastercraft’s Variotech series, for example, gives its operator the flexibility necessary to clean areas of variable sizes by offering an adjustable-width cleaning surface. They added another level of precision and control with a patented technology they call U-Turn. The brush heads float freely on a telescopic base that allows the operator to rotate them up to 200 degrees in either direction. If dying batteries are a hindrance to your workflow, the Variotech will also let you swap out the expelled batteries for fresh, charged ones on the fly. No more waiting for the machine to recharge on the job.
Efficiency is becoming an industry standard, an according to ISSA’s most recent survey of industry trends for 2012, energy is still king. The Variotech is remarkably efficient for its size and effective cleaning area, with high-efficiency, low horse power motors.