Diamond blades, their water-cooled cutting profiles abrading their way through granite and sandstone with equal disdain, are designed to be used in different applications. For example, that granite cutting edge will also move leisurely through a block of marble, but that doesn’t mean it can then be repurposed as a cured concrete cutting blade or one that chops through asphalt.
Read the Recommended Usage Section
To get the best results, always read the specs table that comes with a diamond blade. If it specifies brickwork and cured concrete, then it’s designed to abrade those two construction materials, not sandstone or marble. If the table only lists masonry, then that’s the application the abrasive cutting disc will best suit. To do otherwise would be to prematurely shorten the lifespan of a valuable tool.
The Different Concrete Diamond Blades
Not every concrete cutter is created equal. In that gritty stuff, sand and aggregate coarseness effect blade wear rate, so new diamonds are exposed faster if this aggregate is super-rough. What’s needed here is a higher-quality synthetic diamond, plus a bonding agent that wears away at just the right rate. Diamond cutting blades, the ones built to cut through concrete, need industrial-toughened gems, plus a bonding agent that’s designed for this sole purpose.
Asphalt Cutting Capabilities
Out on a nearby road, a cloud of debris is flying. An asphalt specced abrasive disc is moving at speed through the soft material. The relatively smooth cut, carried out by a segmented blade and its laser-welded diamonds, is executed rapidly. The hard-bonded sparklers work dry or wet, and there’s a breeze of cool air generated by the segments as they create their straight-line incisions in the roadway or parking garage.
Fine-edged Continuous Rim Diamond Blades
Outfitted with a softer bonding material, this blade type creates fine scores on fragile tiles, which could be made of ceramic, glass, or porcelain. That uniform edge also channels cooling water very well. The diamonds are hard, of course, but it’s the softer bonding material that stops the ceramic tiling from chipping. To really guarantee that finely scored cut, the abrasive discs for this application are usually designed to rotate at slower speeds.
Concrete diamond blades are pulled from their packages when the abrasive tool operates on a structure or roadway support. For the topmost layer of an impact-absorbing highway, asphalt cutting blades are substituted. Then there are continuous and segmented profiles, with the former blade type finding employment in tile and marble cutting applications. Masonry discs cut bricks, sandstone variants cut rough-hewn rock and hardened granite. Or, by opting for a multipurpose design, a general-purpose blade cuts as many materials as are listed on its spec sheet.
