Flour and eggs are cake ingredients, does'nt make them an actual cake.
SPM is closer to a detergent as it does have a couple of extra ingredients but normal microslitters is (I think) quite a way off a traditional detergent, and we need to compare like for like, MS is a prespray not an in tank detergent. so really if we want to make a comparison we should compare the ingredients to something like power burst or traffic lane cleaner
Mike , the main cleaning constituent of any of the Carpet powders i can think of is usually either STPP or Sodium Carbonate , same goes for laundry powders etc .
However in most detergent products its complemented by couple of other ingredients fo example a wetting agent like a non ionic surfactant .
What im getting at is who decided that removing the surfactant is either benificial or
allows what remains to called something other than a detergent .
To me its just a less complex version of the detergent product .
Take a product like Ultimate Master for example .... many at this stage would put it into a traditional detergent catagory and to some they would considered ' old ' technology . Whereas a microsplitter or SPM to them would considered a newer technology .
But look at the ingredients ....
Ultmate Master is 30% complex phosphates ( STPP) as its main cleaning constituent just like the Microsplitter products .
But Ultimate master then adds some additional ingredients benifical for effective cleaning although perhaps not essential as the main ingredient would probably do a pretty good job on its own as shown by MS users . However it adds a small amount of wetting agent , carbonates , water softener to aid cleaning .
Now Ultimate Master is a similar but more complex product to an STPP Microsplitter or SPM .... so does it deserve to called a traditional detergent in an outdated derogatory way ....
Like i said if there was a study that could be refered to which would offer a proven theory as to why the less complex STPP detergent products ( marketed as Microsplitter or non detergent ) is advantageous to CC that would be something ....
But to me this stripped down detergent seems to a purely marketing invention .