NEW TECHNOLOGY IN NATURAL STONE BLOCK CUTTING PROCESSES: MULTIWIRE MACHINES

Abstract

Global economic developments in the natural building stone industry in recent years have brought along new searches in the context of increasing production efficiency, reducing costs, and adapting to market competition. In this sense, multiwire machines are widely used in the world natural building stone industry, especially in Europe and South America, in cutting stone blocks such as granite and basalt, which are known as hard stones. Multiwire machines, which differ from gang saws and circular saws cutting technologies, have many advantages. In this study, multiwire machines were discussed in detail according to their working principles and their advantages and disadvantages were examined. At the same time, multiwire machines were compared with other block cutting machines in all aspects, from installation to operating processes. As a result of this study, it is concluded that multiwire machines should be evaluated as an alternative to circular saw machines (ST), which are used especially in cutting relatively small sized blocks as in Turkey, and also gangsaws. Moreover, it has been concluded that they are quite advantageous in terms of cutting speed, total energy consumption, labor costs and market competition conditions. Diamond segmented cutting technologies, which have been used in block cutting processes for many years, have become increasingly widespread in Turkey, especially in recent years, with the application area called multiwire machines. It has been observed that a rapid transformation has begun in the enterprises from ST and gangsaws to multiwire machines. © 2023 IMCET 2023 - Proceedings of the 28th International Mining Congress and Exhibition of Turkey. All rights reserved.