For surface processing, to level and make flat, to smooth and polish a cement or concrete floor, understanding how diamond tools work is really important. These tools are used during most of the working phases and determine aesthetic results, times and operating costs.
Nowadays the diamonds used by industry are synthetic type, that is, products specifically for this use. The diamond dust It appears as a sand and is divided into different grain sizes depending on the uses.
A diamond to coarse grain will be used to produce tools intended for roughing work while a diamond fine grain It will be used to make tools suitable for finishing work.
Diamond tools are joined together by injection molding or hot and cold pressing, vacuum brazing or electrodeposition.
The two most used terms when talking about diamond tools are;
- the grain
- the diamond bond
Most diamond tools consist primarily of synthetic diamond powder, measured in microns and called grit, and a bonding material, usually metal or resin, or a combination of bonding materials (hybrid tools).
Each grit is designed to remove scratches from concrete floors.
The rule of thumb is that each consecutive grit should be roughly doubled, so that the scratches from the previous pass can be removed.
For example, if you start working with a 16/20 grit tool, the next grit should be 30/40, then 60/80, then 100 or 120, 200 or 220, 400, 800,1500,3000.
What does it mean to rectify concrete?
Grinding is performed on a concrete floor in order to obtain a smooth and homogeneous surface usually using metal-bonded diamond tools; depending on the floor and the aesthetic result required, on average the steps start from the lowest starting grain, typically 16/20 or 30/40, up to 120 grain.
Are all metal bond diamond tools the same?
It is often easy to fall into the design trap of thinking that all tools are often the same and it can be tempting to buy cheap diamond tools, but grinding and polishing concrete is a very laborious activity and the time spent to redo a poorly prepared and sanded floor is much more expensive than a high productivity tool.
There are many products with different shapes on the market, there are tools with round, rectangular, single, double, inclined, multiple segments, etc.,
What is most important in the selection, especially in the initial stages of cutting, is the quality of the tool (tools that work well and their life is not too short with premature wear) and a tool that makes a clean cut with few or no scratches at all which allows for easier subsequent processing.
Abrasives must also be carefully selected for the hardness of the bond; since a different hardness in relation to the type of CLS being worked on determines the way in which the diamonds are exposed and therefore work and wear out.
Sometimes there is a difficulty in understanding how different types of metal bond tools work on concrete and one simply starts the sander and tries it directly on the concrete.
Hard cement requires a softer bond to prevent closure and to allow the diamonds to be easily exposed for maximum cutting.
Soft concrete requires a harder bond, so it can last longer (soft bond will cut, but will wear out too quickly on soft concrete).
However, trying it directly means risking wearing out the tools in 50 square meters and at the end of the year adding up several costs that could be avoided simply by using the SURFACE HARDNESS DETECTION KIT as a preventive measure and following the tool conversion table.
Concrete Smoothing
Sanding includes all the steps of grit between 100 and 400, the tools used in this phase are usually diamond tools with resin bond or hybrid system
Hybrids are made up of a combination of binding materials such as CERAMIC BOND ceramic systems – or mixed poly-phenolic resins such as SAMURAI and are particularly useful for proceeding quickly in the processing and refining phases.
Concrete Polishing
Mechanical polishing starts after grit 400 up to grit 3,000/3,500, polyphenolic and ester-phenolic resin-based abrasives are generally the most used materials.
Even though today we have introduced the AIR CONCRETE technology, a revolutionary hybrid tool both for the type of shape (which allows the cooling of the tool allowing a better cut) but above all for the type of multi diamond and sealing resin that will allow a deep mechanical polishing because a point of radiant shine is not enough but the flooring takes on a more beautiful tone if it has depth and clarity in the shine
Diamond tools are therefore not the same, they must always be chosen based on the specific job to be done, knowing what type of concrete you are dealing with is important to find the right combination of types of tools that will increase productivity on the one hand and improve the finish of the floors you work on on the other.
Federchemicals leader in the development of products for the treatment of concrete floors
