What is Abrasive?

Many people ask: What is abrasive? Abrasives are sharp and hard materials that are used to grind relatively soft material surfaces.

There are two types of abrasives: natural abrasives and artificial abrasives. According to the hardness of different abrasives, there are two categories: superabrasive and ordinary abrasive.

As we can see from the soft household detergents and gem abrasives to the hardest abrasive material, diamond, the applicable range of abrasives is, in fact, very wide. Abrasive is an indispensable material for the manufacture of every precision product. Nowadays, many natural abrasives have already been replaced by artificial abrasives. Except diamond, the properties of abrasives that are natural are not very stable, but they still have their usefulness. Diamond is the abrasive with the highest hardness. It is produced mainly in South Africa, accounting for 95% of the world's total output, and the rest are taken up by Brazil, Australia, Guyana, and Venezuela. The color of industrial diamonds normally ranges from off-white to black, and these industrial diamonds can usually be crushed to make grinding wheels, belts, polishing wheels and diamond abrasive powder.

The chemical composition of natural corundum is alumina, which is mainly produced in South Africa. It is normally used to polish and grind glass. Emery is also a natural form of alumina. Generally speaking, it is not as pure as corundum. It is mainly produced in Greece and Turkey. It is mostly used to make emery cloth or sandpaper. Garnet abrasives are used for sandblasting, waterjet cutting, manufacturing coated abrasives, filter materials, and wear-resistant floor aggregates. It is mostly used in hardware, steel, castings, ceramics, aluminum, wood, leather industries. Flint is often used to make sandpaper. Quartz is the earliest grinding wheel material, and it is still used to make cutlery and processed glass. Pumice is derived from volcanoes and is the raw material for making polishing powder. Diatomaceous earth is the ingredient of polishing powder and oil stone. Other natural abrasives include talc, silica, feldspar, chert, chalk and so on.