Joined: Tue Jul 02, 2013 9:00 am Posts: 1322 Location: Wylie Texas but in Alaska for a while
Up to now I have been doing most of my cutting with a 600 Batt using the watercut stick from Gearloose, then going to a Domanitrix with 3000 for prepolish. I am pretty happy with that approach.
I am considering the Twistor for a pre-polish and see the recommendation to use a 1200 before the twistor.
I really like the banded polishing laps and am considering a banded BATT cutting lap with 600 on the inside and 1200 on the outer band. (probably a 2/3 1/3 ratio). That way I can do most of my cutting at the 600 and switch to the 1200 for final cutting and be ready for the twistor.
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2012 10:15 am Posts: 352 Location: Cary, NC
wilsonintexas,
Not an expert (and maybe it's just my way of reading what you've written), but I believe you have to have the finer grits on the inner (closer to the hub), bands. If you have the coarser grit on the inner band it will migrate to the outer band and contaminate your lap.
Now, as far as the idea, I'll leave the other experts to chime in. I'm still learning every day.
Bob H <aka Durnik>
_________________ Bob Hodges
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I wrote about my experience with 1200 on copper in another thread... you may find it interesting.
In my case, using 1200 for roughing and preliminary meets is almost as fast as using 600, and the benefit here is that there is much less prepolish/meet-making work to be done at 3k.
For the tourmaline that I largely cut, this means a significant increase in productivity and reduced losses/frustration when an especially deep scratch from the 600 roughing appears.
So, in a nutshell - try out using 1200 only for your roughing and see if you still need 600. Unless it's a large stone I haven't had a need for my 600 charged lap lately.
-Allan
_________________ Allan Aoyama http://www.omnifaceter.net <- Omnifaceter is back online!
Joined: Thu May 15, 2008 4:55 am Posts: 237 Location: Vienna, Austria
I agree with Allan. Since I tried 1200 on copper this is my cutting lap for nearly everything: so far I have used it for diopside, sphene, chrysoberyll, pyro-spessartite and quartz. I have used electrocoated laps first, a 600 crystallite to be precise. Never again. Surface finish is way better at about the same cutting speed (a rechargeable lap never looses its teeth) and I am rid of the edge-breakouts on the gridle I experienced ob brittle materials with the 600 grit. So far no contamination problem. I would have to protect my polish laps from prepolish grits anyway, so basically nothing has changed.
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