A diamond saw blade that costs around £20 today would have cost as much as £60 15 years ago. That is one of the benefits of Far Eastern manufacture. But now there are signs that Europe is making a come-back.

Could diamond tool manufacturing really be returning to Europe? It has never gone away, of course, but Far Eastern manufacturers have long since moved in on the market, even making some of the products that carry European brands.
But with the eastward flow of capital and rising fuel costs increasing the price of products that travel half way round the world to reach the workshops of Europe, the price difference between European and Far Eastern products is decreasing.
And anyone who has had an unhappy experience with the accuracy, longevity or finish achieved using Far Eastern tools is not unhappy about taking a second look at tools made in Europe – because the purchase price is only one element of the cost of tooling.
Stone processors in the UK have reason to be thankful to Oriental manufacturers for accelerating the fall in the price of diamond tools, although competition had been producing improved products at lower prices even before Far Eastern manufacturers had made much of an impression.
The driver of better diamond products at lower prices was the number of masonry companies processing granite, which started growing appreciably from the middle of the 1990s. The resulting increase in demand for diamond tools led to the refinement of those tools.
The first Far Eastern tools brought into the British Isles by distributors were sold at similar prices to European tools, which gave the distributors enviable margins. But it was not long before competition started passing on the savings to customers and prices followed a general downward trend as ever more came from the Far East.
Since 2008, some suppliers have started to re-think their philosophy on sourcing diamond tools.
D Zambelis, for example, based in Essex, has sourced its own brand diamond blades from Korea for many years but is now looking to shift as much as possible of its product sourcing to Europe.
The move follows what appears to be back-door price increases. The blades have always been supplied to Zambelis in sleeves at no extra cost, but the latest order included an extra charge for those sleeves without any warning that the charge would be added.
Director Stella Zambelis feels it was badly handled by her suppliers and complains: “You send them an email and it takes them four days to get back to you; they say they will deliver in six weeks and it takes 12 weeks. I find them very difficult to deal with.”
Stella says the Marmoelettromeccanica diamond tools from Italy she sells are more expensive than Korean tools but she believes they are more accurate, giving processors millimetre accuracy.
“We try to buy as much as we can from Europe – unless the European suppliers are buying from Korea, then we might as well go directly to Korea. But we prefer to buy from Europe to help the economy in Europe.”
The Swiss company KGS, with its UK base in East Peckham, Kent, has also now left the Far East, having closed its factory in China. It says it is concentrating on automating to make production in Europe more efficient, which has enabled it to be able to compete with the Koreans.
Of course, it is not just in the stone sector nor just in Europe that the economy is suffering and the huge and diverse St Gobain group is continuing the consolidation of its diamond tool production worldwide. One consequence is that manufacturing of Nimbus products at Burgess Hill in West Sussex is to come to an end in the next few months.
St Gobain bought Nimbus about a decade ago as part of its expansion in abrasives. It also took over names such as Unicorn, English Abrasives and Universal Abrasives, which have subsequently left the market because the products duplicated others available from St Gobain. There is no suggestion that the Nimbus brand will go but it will be manufactured elsewhere.
There are changes, too, at Diamut, the diamond tooling company taken over by the Biesse Group, the parent of the Intermac CNC workcentre company.
Intermac and Diamut exhibited together at the Natural Stone Show at ExCeL London last year, when Simon Vickery, who had been given responsibility for sales of Diamut tools in the UK, was on hand to talk to visitors to the show.
Simon has since left the business and Diamut is no longer intending to supply the tools directly to the stone industry in the UK itself but has decided to distribute them through an established supplier to the stone industry. A deal was due to have been concluded this month (March) and an announcement about where you can buy the tools will be made in due course.
Some suppliers are cutting the cost of tools by refurbishing them. Some are doing that surreptitiously and selling the resulting tools as new, but DK Holdings is offering it as a service.
Because DK Holdings manufactures tools at its factory in Staplehurst, Kent, it has the equipment to refurbish electroplated or metal bonded tools. It usually takes two or three weeks. Reclaiming the steel part of the tool clearly saves on the cost of materials but coating it represents most of the cost of manufacturing, so there is no point in having a finger router recoated. However, when it comes to a big milling wheel that might cost £600 to replace and £400 to refurbish, it is worth considering.
CRL Stone also offers a re-dressing service for diamond tools. CRL send the tools back to its supplier, ADI, in Italy. Again, for most small electroplated and vacuum brazed tools it is not worth it, but a large or complex profiling tool can be worth sending for cleaning and re-coating. There is normally a five-day turnaround plus shipping time.
CRL Stone says it is doing well at the moment with ADI’s Italian-made Express Polishing tools for CNC workcentres. The Express tools are popular because they offer a two-tool sequence to polish the edge of granite or quartz instead of the usual three tools.
Just about all the major manufacturers have come up with ways of shaping and polishing that use fewer stages. There is a trade off, with each tool having to work harder and longer to produce the finished job, but more companies are converting to such systems.
Andrew Gentle, the Sales Manager at DK Holdings, says DK’s rising star currently is its three-step wet or dry 100mm polishing pads. They are popular, he believes, because the granite worktops installed in homes and restaurants in the past decade or so have reached the point where they are showing signs of age. Previously they might have been replaced but more people are now having them refurbished. As people do not generally want water splashed all around their kitchens and serving areas, dry working is preferred and a three disc system makes life easier on-site than using seven discs (or eight with a buffing disc).
There are other three-stage dry systems – but just a cautionary note: dry grinding is fine with granite but you probably will not want to try it on an installed engineered quartz worktop.
Another innovation making its way through the brands since it was introduced a few years ago is the careful positioning of diamonds in saw blades, which is said to improve the performance of the blade.
One such blade is the Edge JCB Matrix. It is one of the own brand products from Edge, the company in Derby that recently opened a diamond stone division being overseen by Glyn Knighton, the Sales Manager.
The Edge JCB Matrix uses new segment technology whereby each diamond particle is designed to be positioned in a particular array to its neighbouring diamond particles, depending on the application of the blade and the Matrix that the diamond sits within.
Edge says that, unlike some diamond placement products, the 3D pattern is consistent throughout the whole segment, giving versatility of application, enhanced cutting speed and unrivalled lifespan.
Edge promise the best diamond grit, the latest in metal bonding compounds and the best metal blanks to stop detensioning in the cut under pressure. They also use the highest grade copper sandwich technology, which Edge says makes the Matrix blades the quietest on the market.
Each diamond particle is placed so that when it is finally used up, the neighbouring diamond particle takes up the cutting performance. And the cut pattern the diamond particles create results in small channels that help carry coolant onto the cutting face and allow the used abrasive to be flushed out of the way.
The grid pattern of the diamond on each side wall of the blade means the blade maintains its width and shape to give a clean, chip free finish.
Just as worktops are being renovated rather then replaced, so are floors – and for the same reasons. Here, too, diamond technology is increasingly being used. A major aim is to make the care of stone floors easier and less time consuming.
The severity and length of the 2010/11 winter started a mini boom in floor cleaning that has continued since, perhaps as more customers have become aware of what can be achieved.
All the salt put down on roads during the severe winter of 2010/11 took its toll on stone, terrazzo and concrete floors, especially in shops. That brought in a lot of work for specialist cleaning companies and gave a nice boost to the suppliers of cleaning machines and consumables such as DK Holdings, KGS, HTC Sweden AB, Superabrasives and, since the Marmomacc exhibition in Verona in September, D Zambelis with Coor & Kleever.
There are lots of advantages to using diamonds to refurbish floors rather than chemicals, says HTC, not least of which is the environment.
HTC Sweden AB supply the Twister daily floor cleaning system that uses a floor pad containing microscopic diamonds that clean and polish the floor mechanically. It is quick, does not require polish, wax or other chemicals and can be used without specialist knowledge.
The diamond pads fit all types of auto scrubbers and polishing machines and all you have to add is water.
Superabrasives’ floor grinding and polishing machines and diamond tooling systems go under the name of Lavina, to which have just been added 110V and gas powered versions.
Superabrasives, represented in the UK and Ireland by its own subsidiary, Superabrasives UK Ltd in Liverpool, make a wide variety of diamond tools sold through a distribution network and will even produce designs made specifically to customer requirements.
Superabrasives’ resin bond, electroplated, vacuum brazed, metal and ceramic bond tools are recognised around the world under brand names such as Toro F flat edge and Toro B multi-edge diamond discs for automatic edge polishing machines and Hexco CNC routers and milling tools that are continually being developed, widening the range of profiles to satisfy every processor.
As there are not too many areas showing much sign of growth, if anyone wants to move into the surface refurbishment arena a good place to start is Crawshaws, the London specialist tools and consumables supplier to the stone industry – because Crawshaws not only supplies the equipment, it also offers the training necessary to make sure the work is carried out properly.
Gill MacDonald has taken on the mantle of ‘Stone Doctor’ at Crawshaws and runs the courses, assisted by her son, Stuart, who has his own cleaning company so has hands-on experience of using all the products, such as the Revolution micro-diamond polishing pads made specially for Crawshaws in Spain and the Stardust and Jimmy dry polishing system for granite.
The courses are tailored to the requirements of each individual customer but are only for between one and three people because Gill firmly believes that to learn you need to do – and, she warns, in the real world it is not an absolute science.
There are so many different stones with varying properties that one of the important things she believes people can learn is to experiment and use their own experience based on what they learn on the course.
Each operator leaves the Crawshaws course with an instruction book to guide them to the right solutions and Gill is happy to provide any further help on the telephone. “We are very versatile here,” she says.
To book a course or for more advice on surface cleaning call 0208 686 7997 or see the crawshaws.co.uk website.

Diamant Boart has plenty to celebrate

Diamant Boart is this year celebrating its 75th anniversary. In the UK, it is based in Leeds, which is central to the market it serves. The rest of the Husqvarna Construction Division of which Diamant Boart is part is in Gloucester and the administration is in Newton Aycliffe in County Durham.

In June 2002, Diamant Boart was acquired by the Electrolux Group (Sweden) and together with Dimas, Partner and Target, became the Electrolux Construction Products division.

In 2006, the Electrolux Group was split into two entities, Electrolux and Husqvarna, each of which is quoted on the Stockholm stock market. Husqvarna Construction Products employs 2,200 people throughout the world, generates a turnover of €350million and has 10 production centres, four of them operated by Diamant Boart.

Before the Electrolux / Husqvarna split, Diamant Boart had left the site in Forest it had occupied since it was formed and moved to Ath, which became its world headquarters.

There it has its management and carries out its research & development activities and marketing, as well as operating two production lines making tools for the stone industry. It also has factories in Rio de Mouro (Portugal), Lonato (Italy), and in Hebei (China), where discs and finishing tools are made.

Diamant Boart originally made tools using low quality diamonds extracted from mines in the Congo. In the 1960s it was one of the early developers of the synthetic industrial diamonds that are now used in 95% of the world’s diamond tools.

It had also been a leader in the development of powder metallurgy after the Second World War – and the sustained development of metal powders and techniques for using them has contributed extensively to its position in the market.

Among the company’s other credits have been major developments of cobalt powders; it was first to offer an industrial solution for diamond grain coating; it was a pioneer in the use of granulation, mechanical pre-formation and high-pressure fritting techniques as well as micro fusion laser welding; and it invented cast aluminium alloy discs.