Diamond cup wheels have concave faces and edge-facing grinding segments. They’re coated in diamonds, although they’re not classed as grinding blades. No, these tools don’t cut incisions and don’t “saw” through concrete or any other obdurate materials. Switching to a cup wheel profile, the perforation-packed grinding surface scours, or it polishes. As it turns out, loads of applications need tooling solutions like this. They need that surface finishing power.
An Axially Repurposed Blade Profile
What would happen if diamond blade cutting tools could swing their functional workings around by ninety-degrees? Well, that’s how diamond cup wheels developed. With blades, the axis where work is done starts at the blade rim, before tracking down the tool’s core. Switching the angle of attack by 90° so that the tool face absorbs the brunt of the impact, the disc edges operate as face-transposed surface grinders. Interestingly, the core is concave now. The dish shape is also chock full of circular openings, which are there to eject waste materials. As the surface grinding work proceeds, abraded detritus exits through the spinning air channels. Just as a quick by-the-way, the cup also functions as a powered fan, so it sucks away heat as the tool scours a surface.
Diamond Cup Wheels: The Applications
The simplest, least costly planar grinding discs are equipped with high-grit coarseness ratings. The sintered bonding agent ages fast while larger embedded diamonds scour all kinds of surface coatings out of existence. Paint, rust, old layers of stubborn wallpaper, all of these obstinate coatings quickly erode and disappear when attacked by 120-grit diamond cup wheels. If this tool is operating at top speed, no surface stain can survive its assault, not for long. Now, what about the flip side of the applications coin? What about fine-grinding work? Unlike the paint or rust expulsion work, these diamond-encrusted, edge-abrading segments are intended to polish sheet surfaces. For example, an oxide-coated sheet of aluminium will look dull, but it’ll shine after being polished by a fine-grained diamond cup wheel. Designed to polish marble, quartz, even concrete, the tools can impart visual appeal to the coarsest construction mediums.
For wood and softer construction materials, contractors stick with everyday sanding tools. They deliver more than enough grinding power. True, they’ll also work on wallpaper and paint. For deeply ingrained rust patches, though, we advise a switch to a diamond cup wheel. Then, for fine-polishing on famously coarse substances like granite and quartz, a low-grit polishing cup wheel is the right tool. Made of the toughest, most obdurate particles of gritty stone, those depressed cores and spinning openings drain the polishing heat and rough-edged waste.
