Regardless of whether you’re a small to medium sized cabinet shop or a large production facility, if you haven’t considered PCD (polycrystalline diamond) saw blades perhaps now is the time! Materials such as particle board, MDF, laminates and solid surface are all excellent candidates for diamond saw blades. When comparing Diamond v. Carbide, depending on the machine and the material application, diamond saw blades can outperform carbide by a ratio of 30-50 times!
Over the years, diamond saw blade production has improved tremendously and as an industry, we’ve seen steady price reductions. With the multitude of suppliers now offering PCD tooling it’s important for you, the discerning buyer, to know what you are purchasing and compare apples to apples in the shopping process. There are several important factors to think about when considering the purchase of a PCD blade. Simply putting diamond tips on a carbide saw body, for instance, might result in the blade body wearing out long before the tips will. The PCD blade tip height plays a big role in price. A 300mm x 72 tooth blade with a 6mm high tip, for instance, will cost more than the same blade with a 4mm tip. Here’s the catch: The latter will only be serviced a maximum of 3x and it will have to be retired, whereas the 6mm tip blade will usually yield 7-8 resharpenings. Another important point is to know upfront what the typical cost to sharpen is.
Here is an example use case from one of our customers:
A cabinet manufacturer located in Florida and utilizing a Holzma Model 430 beam saw found they were changing their carbide main and scoring blades on a daily basis! At the beginning of 2016, they invested in a 450 mm PCD main and 180 mm PCD scoring saw. The diamond saw blades were put into production on January 4th and were removed from production for sharpening on April 7th, 69 production days! Needless to say, a second diamond set was ordered.
From replacing carbide saw blades on a daily basis to running 69 production days on one PCD blade set! Considering the cost of a diamond set can be 10 – 12 times the price of a carbide set it leaves little doubt that in this case, the initial cost factor is far outweighed by the extended tool life most certainly justifying the investment. In addition, this doesn’t take into consideration the cost of having to maintain the huge number of carbide sets needed for rotation purposes or the machine downtime savings created.
There is one caveat: Diamond tooling provides the best performance when cutting homogeneous material. If you are cutting particleboard today and solid surface material tomorrow, then you should probably stick to carbide. When deciding whether to switch, be conservative in your cost analysis and base your justification on the diamond tool lasting 25x longer than carbide or, simply give us a call at 800.544.8436 to discuss and make sure it’s the right choice for you.
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