What is Garnet Abrasive?

Garnet Abrasive

Key Features

Garnet abrasive is mined from almandite and andradite mineral deposits in China. In its natural state, garnet is a semi-precious stone. Once extracted, it is washed, processed and screened to the necessary grade for use as an abrasive.

Specification

1.What is Garnet Abrasive?

Garnet abrasive is a naturally occuring silicate mineral deposit. The harder species of garnet like almandine are used for abrasive purposes, and have a hardness on the Mohs scale of about 7.0 to 8.0. Once extracted, it is washed, processed and screened to the necessary grade for use as an abrasive.

Where conditions allow Garnet Abrasives can be recycled and used as an economical alternative to Aluminium Oxide, Chilled Iron Copper Slag or Steel Grit. Garnet Abrasive generally creates less dust than expendable  abrasives as it breaks down less readily.

Garnet abrasive is one of the most effective, safe, and versatile medias for blast cleaning ,water jet cutting and polishing.

2.Grade of Garnet Abrasive Media

· Types - the most common types are Sandblasting Garnet,Water Jet Cutting Garnet and Polishing Garnet

· Grades - our most popular grades are 20/40 mesh ,30/60 mesh for sandblasting , 80 mesh for water jet cutting and 100/120 mesh for polishing

3.The Benefits of Garnet Abrasive Media

· Garnet is the optimum abrasive for use in our SAT Blast Wet Blast Unit & Water Jet Cutting for most applications.

· Clean – Garnet abrasive produces less dust than other expendable abrasives, making it ideal for use in tanks and other confined spaces.

· Cost-Effective – Garnet abrasive lasts a long time, and is so effective that lower volumes overall are required for most jobs.

· Garnet Abrasive is semi reusable and can be re-used several times under correct conditions. It does break down quicker than fully re-usable abrasives such as aluminium oxide.

· Optimum Surface Profile – garnet abrasive creates a superior surface for adhesion coating.

· Environmentally Friendly – Garnet is inert and non-toxic, making it safe for use around bodies of water. It is also very easy to clean, whilst its durability reduces the generation of dust.

4.Uses of Garnet Abrasive
●Traditional application
A.Large granular garnet (>3mm) has been taken as the role of jewelry.
B.Medium granular garnet (0.10mm-1.5mm)

* The characteristics of garnet have good hardness and high toughness, which can be used for sandblasting, rust removal, water jet cutting.
* Because of its gravity, it can be used as heavy medium, oil well drilling mud weighting agent filter material.
* Thanks to its chemical stability and toughness, garnet can be a filler for rubber and paint coatings.
* Using the ability and chemical composition of pomegranate stone,which can be used in the construction of airport runway, wear-resisting floor and non slip road surface of highway.
* Making use of garnets’ beautiful colors, it can be made as lacquer and wall paints.
C.Garnet powder
It can be used for grinding optical instruments, semiconductor, glass and ceramic products, parts of the production of polished soft metal, and cleaning the oil pollution on the surface of mechanical transport equipment.
Garnet in 1878 began to be used for producing sandpapers; during the reign of from 1944 to 2001, garnet, mainly used for optical lenses, jewelry, picture tube of polishing and grinding; since 1988, garnet is widely used in spray painting / surface sandblasting before electroplating, high pressure water jet cutting, polishing, grinding and other related fields.

●Four common industrial usages
A.Wear-resistant floor aggregate
Due to hardness of garnet, it also known as natural corundum. In recent years, with the development of the domestic diamond sand flooring industries, the applications of garnet abrasive in this industry are also increasing. This floor is characterized by bright colors, wear resistant to acid and alkali, easy to clean up and maintenance, especially suitable for parking, airport, factory production workshops, docks and other needs clean and significant place.

B.Water purification material or waste water filter material

This is a new application of garnet abrasive in the environmental protection industry, but it is early in the foreign countries. At present, it has been more mature, but in the domestic this application has yet to be universal. It mainly uses the characteristics of the garnet abrasive material ratio, porosity, large hardness and high wear resistance to acid and alkali, in addition to other reasons like its natural no harmful substances, rich in nature, and the price is reasonable and so on. There is a trend of gradually replacing quartz sand and magnetite filter material.

C.Water cut grade garnet abrasive
This is one of the two applications in using garnets in domestic, which is mainly with the advanced cold water jet cutting equipment to cut and shape various materials. The quality of using the garnet abrasive has a great influence on cutting performance and the yield rate, especially in the ceramic tile, art glasses and fragile products of water jet medallion. It has been widely used in aviation, military, stone, construction, decoration and other refined processing enterprises.

This Garnet has been cleaned and re-screened to Waterjet Specs and gone through several passes on a magnetic separation device to remove most tramp minerals. This material is NOT Indian Garnet, which is really the highest quality material one can buy.  Our hard rock Waterjet Garnet will have a hint of a trace mineral called Wollastonite (a tramp mineral) that we are unable to completely remove with magnetic separators.  It will thus be slightly more dusty, about 5% more dusty than Indian waterjet garnet. If you were using Bengal Bay Alluvial Garnet you will notice a difference when switching to our media.  Mainly you will need to change your filters more often (about twice as often) due to the Wollastonite.  There should be no change to cutting speed.  Benefits of our media include availability - we have huge quantities available (for decades to come), at a great price, with virtually no chlorides (Indian garnet contains chlorides), same gradation as Indian Garnet, and are now able to offer this media in a 2040, 3060, as well as 80 grit.  This media can certainly be used in regular sandblasting applications, and it will be noticeably less dusty.   Coverage Notes For Regular Sandblasters Using Waterjet Grade:  Paint contractors are loving this waterjet grade for regular sandblasting use.  Surfaces are blasting exceptionally clean, free of debri, and they report using 1/3 to 1/2 LESS than regular sandblasting garnet would require.  So even though the price is higher for our Waterjet grade garnet, project costs are less due to less media consumption, and labor costs.

 D.Sand blasting and polishing material

This is the most potential and widely used garnet abrasives field, because it is used in the industries that are closely related to the national production, such as shipbuilding, automobiles, pipelines, drilling platforms and other basic areas. Garnet blasting abrasives can easily reach the most strict industrial and military sandblasting requirements. Besides, it do harmless to the human body and environment, the working environment is good and it is an affordable price. Therefore, it can easily replace other traditional blasting abrasives. 
At present, there are some problems in sandblasting abrasives, like harmful substances, high prices and other issues. The former such as copper slag, quartz sand, the latter such as brown fused alumina, white fused alumina. While garnet abrasive does not contain harmful substances, on the other hand it can achieve excellent blasting effect. Not only can it achieve the effect of other abrasive blasting, but also it can achieve the highest SA3 and SA2.5 blasting grade. The most important thing is that it is a kind of natural abrasive, the price is much cheaper than the brown fused alumina, etc...

Garnet abrasive is most commonly used as a high-performance blast media, for the cleaning of aluminium and fibreglass structures. Because it is an inert, non-toxic, naturally-occurring mineral, garnet abrasive is also used on sites where water contamination is a concern, such as dry docks, bridges and harbours.

Garnet abrasive does not produce as much dust as other expendable abrasives, making it particularly suited for use in such confined spaces as tanks and containers.

In addition to the sand blasting industry, in the polishing grinding industry the garnet abrasives are also using a lot. As for garnet powder, it is mainly used in a number of high precision industries, such as mobile phone screen polishing, gold jade polishing. Certainly, there are many applications in using garnet abrasive, like sandpapers and abrasive filler etc... With the further development of the industry, garnet abrasives will have a better application in more fields.