In accordance to the specific assignment and application, smaller stone plates are cut from raw rock slabs. In most cases, saws with geometrically undefined cutting segments, such as rope, gang or circular saws are used for the cutting process. In this paper, we would like to present a new approach to the cutting of mineral materials by introducing the new and advantageous method of using band saws with geometrically defined PCD cutting segments. In our tests, the band saw achieved a 30 times higher cutting performance than the gang saw. In addition, the cutting clearance was reduced, which lead to a reduction of the stone mud of 80%. This not only offers an economic advantage, but it is also resource-efficient. This method also shows advantages in the cutting of reinforced and ultra-high performance steel with a comparably soft steel, a material, which poses high demands on the cutting tool.
Like any other natural resource, natural stone is finite. Here, the main types of stone are granite, marble and sandstone. The extraction and processing needs a lot of energy and uses up a high amount of material.
The rocks are often extracted from the quarries with the help of diamond wire saws with geometrically undefined cutting segments. Since the 1980s, even a hard stone such as granite can be cut with diamond wires. The process in the quarry starts with the extraction of primary blocks of solid rocks (Kremshofer & Seebacher 2011). In the next step, these primary blocks are processed in the company's production halls. Here, the blocks are divided into sheet material for the cladding of facades or walls, for indoors as well as outdoors, floor coverings (stairs, floor), kitchen worktops, washstands, home and garden items, as well as for monuments (Grömling 2011). Due to the limited resources in German quarries and the cost pressure through low-priced imports, the pressure on the German natural stone industry to identify and implement potentials to reduce production costs and maximize resource efficiency has grown. Therefore, existing process limitations need to be broken with new technological and technical concepts (Treppe et al. 2011). In the year 2008, the amount of expenditures for innovations within the field of stone ware, glass and ceramics only took up 3% of the annual turnover which clearly shows the ambivalent situation of the processing and manufacturing companies (Grömling 2011). On the one hand, the demands on the production quality and the pressure on the price increase constantly; on the other hand, there are no available innovative concepts.
