First, the granite is installed in your home is a relatively simple process, if it looks like from the perspective of what we see from the beginning that the final consumer. In a nutshell, is calling us, you choose the disks, and agree on the details, then a few weeks after they are installed.
However, it is always a long process in the stone from its natural state in the soil all the way to be involved in the kitchen table. The process of the Turning Stone in decorativeand functional materials has become more or less the same for centuries. On the other hand, the equipment has changed dramatically in that time, and reduces production time considerably.
The process begins in the quarry, where they are cut large chunks out of the earth many times in a stair-step pattern. Various types of saws and cutting methods used. There are wire saws, along a steel cable with diamond segments are embedded in them. These cables are passed through the "coreHoles "that were drilled horizontally and vertically into a meeting place in a corner of the invisible hand" bank "will be removed. Then the cable is passed through a disc than ever deeper into the stone. Trepanning, as mentioned above, along with "radiation" is another method of freeing large blocks of stone at this early stage of the process. some expansion slots instead of using liquid explosives in the drill, which is responsible for the fragile stone, more and more cracksBlocks.
This first step of the process requires very large and heavy equipment, the blocks of granite from the earth and get ready for dispatch to the "banda" saws. When the blocks arrive at the gate saw operation, the entire block in a 40-60 plates cut simultaneously. These blocks are not standard size, but an average would be approximately 6 meters by 6 meters by 10 meters. This would produce a 72 inch thick plate is not the cutting blades, for about 60 plates. The bandwidth of a typical bladeI'm not really the blades are flat steel materials 3 "x 3 / 16 inch thick. They have no teeth or diamond in it. They mounted in the rack two centimeters wide and 3 cm depending on the thickness desired. The rack is wider the 6-meter-wide plate. This rack is in turn an arm that is outside of an enormous engine to create a movement in and out of the rack mounted when the wheel is rotated by high-performance engines.
After the block was turned into slabs, the car stopsthe 60 plates on his car went shopping for the polishing line. The line of polishing is another massive machine with multiple heads, disk drives of varying degrees of sanding and polishing to polish a rough go. These mills are horizontal to the head plate is on a rough horizontal plane slowly through the machine on a conveyor belt. When the plates come out the other end polishing, polished in the rough. They will then take the A-frames for guestsShipping for wholesalers all over the world.
At this point the panels to give our world here at Alpha works in stone, we will begin your turn in the process. We come to your home and make an exact model of your areas of ceiling. This can wreak havoc on your cabinets new or existing work plan are carried out without them. After the presentation we made, we want to check with you at our shop for a layout to meet so that we can agree on, which are part of various boardson the different sections of your counters.
Once we have agreed on the layout, we go to word cutting and polishing your countertops. The surface has already been polished or honed, or brushed as the case may be. We cut the counters to match the templates on what is known as a bridge saw. This is a large "upside down" table saw. The sawing motor with the diamond blade are suspended above the saw table on the "bridge". This bridge in turn is sitting on two rails some 18 feet apart with rack and pinion drive to move the entire bridge east and west. The motor with blade runs north and south on the bridge via another set of rack and pinion gears. This entire apparatus allows the blade to be positioned anywhere over the 6 foot by 12 foot slab of granite. The saw motor only moves in one straight line, so the table beneath that the slab is laying on rotates in order to allow cuts at any angle needed. The rotating table has positive lock stops at 90, 45 and 135 degrees, and can be locked in any other degree for other cuts as needed. The table on our saw tilts up to nearly vertical via hydraulic cylinders. This makes loading easy and safe for both our workers and for your material. Once the countertop pieces have been cut to size, the edge polishing process begins.
Depending on the configuration of the piece and the desired edge detail, we have several different methods of shaping and polishing them. If they are straight line edges with a flat, beveled, or bull nose shape, they go one our "Pro Edge" machine. This is a machine some 18 feet long, 6 feet wide and around 6 feet tall. It is massively heavy and does the work of two to three men in terms of its output capabilities. You will see both the bridge saw and the Pro Edge in action in the video. If the edges are curved or have jogs in them, these are shaped with routers and grinders. Ogee edge details and other complex shapes of edges are done with large routers.
All through the process we have water spraying on the diamond tooling doing the cutting and grinding. Once the cutting and grinding is done, we proceed with the polishing process. This is done with a series of polishing pads on hand polishing grinders. There are 4 to 8 steps involved in the polishing process depending on the stone type and finish desired. The polishing grits start around 50 grit and go up to 8000 or 10,000 grit. In the case of antique finishes, stiff brushes are used on the grinding machines in place of the polishing pads.
Now that we have your countertops fabricated, it is time to bring them into your home and install them in place. This requires a little brute force and a little experience doesn't hurt a thing! We have learned to work smarter, not necessarily harder, to get the pieces into place. Granite countertops are very heavy to bring in. We use a combination of wheels, ramps, tables and other devices depending on the particular job. The slabs are test fitted then we adhere them to the cabinet tops with the appropriate stone adhesives. Joints are put together with epoxies formulated for stone work. Once the epoxy cures, we dress up the joints and other final details, leaving you with new gleaming granite countertops!
