Power trowel
A gas or electric machine with rotating steel blades used to trowel large floor areas. Walk-behind and ride-on versions are standard on commercial slabs.
What does power trowel mean?
Power troweling allows a small crew to finish a large slab within the available window, and blade pitch is progressively increased across passes to tighten the surface. The machines are unforgiving of timing: entering too early ruins the surface and too late leaves it unworkable. Because they close the surface aggressively, they magnify the delamination risk on air-entrained concrete.
In practice
The ride-on machines circling a warehouse slab under work lights at midnight are chasing a finishing window that will not wait.