How come diamond saws can cut through diamond stones meant for jewelry and industrial equipment but not wood?
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Really, it boils down to the size, shape, and layout of the teeth on the saw. For instance, if you have a saw that has its teeth all aligned (like a V if you look at it head on) and a saw that has its teeth offset slightly (more like a W if you look at it head on), one will cut across the grain of wood better and one will cut along the grain of wood better. There’s an excellent (and illustrated!) explanation of saw tooth engineering here: http://www.rockler.com/articles/display_article.cfm?story_id=72&cookietest=1. The blades there are mostly wood blades. For blades designed to cut through harder materials, there’s good illustrations here: http://www.tyrolit.com/page.cfm?vpath=divisions/construction/drycutting. Note that there aren’t "teeth" so much as gaps in the edge to allow for cooling.
And all this is because, as said in the previous answer, cutting through stone or metal is done by grinding – essentially, by rubbing away a cut with something like sandpaper – while cutting through wood is done by shearing.
Do you own any diamonds, or other precious stones or jewelry?
2 Comments
July 30th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
A diamond saw could theoretically cut wood, but the action of a diamond saw is to cut through the stone by abrasive action and a saw for wood works by shearing through the grain of the wood. You can cut through wood by slowly drawing a diamond coated hack saw blade but will quickly get tired of it and must keep the blade free from clogs and not overheat it.
References :
July 30th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Really, it boils down to the size, shape, and layout of the teeth on the saw. For instance, if you have a saw that has its teeth all aligned (like a V if you look at it head on) and a saw that has its teeth offset slightly (more like a W if you look at it head on), one will cut across the grain of wood better and one will cut along the grain of wood better. There’s an excellent (and illustrated!) explanation of saw tooth engineering here: http://www.tyrolit.com/page.cfm?vpath=divisions/construction/drycutting. Note that there aren’t "teeth" so much as gaps in the edge to allow for cooling.
And all this is because, as said in the previous answer, cutting through stone or metal is done by grinding – essentially, by rubbing away a cut with something like sandpaper – while cutting through wood is done by shearing.
References :