Special shaped processing equipment for stone

Due to the high added value of special-shaped stone products, demand for such products is growing steadily in modern architecture, monument fabrication and stone furniture manufacturing. If special-shaped stone processing is carried out manually or by single-process equipment, it will involve heavy labor, low production efficiency, high polishing costs and difficulty in meeting quality requirements. In addition, steel cutting tools suffer rapid wear during operation. For this reason, a wide range of machines specially designed for special-shaped stone processing have been developed worldwide.

Special-shaped stone processing equipment can be divided into two categories according to the workpiece geometry. The first category is used to fabricate special-shaped stone products with uniform cross-sections, or rotary special-shaped parts with similar cross-section profiles but varying cross-sectional areas. The second category is for 3D spatial workpieces with variable cross-sections; these two types require different control dimensions. Equipment requirements vary depending on the geometry of special-shaped stone products. Diamond wire saws and high-pressure water jet technology are mainly adopted for machining special-shaped stone parts with constant cross-sections or rotary special-shaped products of varying cross-sectional areas. By contrast, profiling CNC machines are the primary choice for 3D spatial workpieces with inconsistent cross-section shapes.

CNC diamond wire saws are CNC processing machines that employ flexible cutting tools for special-shaped stone production. They mainly consist of wire wheels, diamond beads, guide wheels, motors, machine frames and wire wheel feeding units. The cutting tool used in this machine is the bead wire. Diamond particles embedded in sintered diamond bead rings move at a linear speed of 20 m/s or higher across the stone surface. It is suitable for cutting large, thick special-shaped stone workpieces. The wire saw delivers high cutting efficiency and large cutting area, with flexible operation, low noise and zero vibration, and can produce smooth cut surfaces. The developed wire saws have evolved from single-wire models that can only mount one diamond bead wire to multi-wire versions capable of installing up to 60 bead wires simultaneously. Compared with the early bulky multi-wire saws, modern multi-wire diamond wire saws are more compact and practical, with overall dimensions similar to conventional wire profiling machines.