From the time we enter the world with the help of medical instruments, until our final tombstone, polished to a glittering hardness, we live in the shadow of the grinding wheel. Name the product. Somewhere there lurks an abrasive operation; this has been so since the cave man, millions of years ago sharpened his tools and weapons by rubbing them together. [LEWI76, p. 3]
The preceding Chaps. 2—6 mapped out how abrasive tooling systems are designed, composed and manufactured. It then was explained how sustainability can be assessed with existing and new methods in Chap. 7, followed by case studies in Chap. 8. To gain an outlook on abrasive tooling systems, the general market trends for abrasive tools and grit material need to be examined. It will then be shown how recent research and innovations lead to more sustainable tools. Service options for tool manufacturers will be discussed followed by a comprehensive, concluding summary of sustainability of abrasive tooling systems for all main stakeholders.
9.1 Market Trends for Abrasive Tools and Grit Material
The global market for abrasive products is tied to the overall economic activity. The production of abrasives by industrial nations is moving to the developing countries such as China and India [ASAM10, p. 313]. In 2010, China consumed about 20 % of the world’s abrasives [MCCL10]. The main markets for abrasives in 2008 were metallic abrasives and fused corundum; the application of superabrasives was almost negligible [MCCL10]. Common types of metallic abrasives are steel shots and grits to be mostly used for blast cleaning. The Taiwanese company FACT predicts a worldwide trend that the consumption and manufacturing of diamond tools will shift massively from Europe and the USA to Asia and China [FACT12].
The Asian market for abrasives will grow with increasing grit quality. Already in 2011, China was the world’s leading producer of fused corundum and silicon carbide, challenging the abrasive grit producers in other countries (Figs. 9.1 and 9.2)
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[USGS12A]. In addition, China has become the biggest producing country of synthetic diamond (Fig. 9.3) [LIZH11]. One reason is the close or equal quality of Chinese diamonds compared to the Western products; another reason is the low price (Table 9.1) [LIZH11].
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Production of synthetic diamond, 2010 [ct] Fig. 9.3 World wide production of industrial diamond in 2010, values of Germany and South Korea are missing, total of 4383 Mio ct = 876 t [USGS12B] |
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Table 9.1 Approximated costs of abrasive grit material in US$
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The amount of synthetic diamond shown in Fig. 9.3 include more uses than abrasive grits, such as wear-resistant coatings, electronic applications, etc. [USGS12B]. Li et al. [LIZH11] anticipate that producers of superhard materials will rather focus on more technical and knowledge intensive areas such as the production of PCD and PCBN than try to compete with the Chinese diamond grit manufacturers. Not discussed here is the mining and production of natural diamonds. Dressing operations will likely still use natural industrial diamond [USGS12B]. Figure 9.4 shows that the CBN market is still dominated by Europe and North America.
production of CBN, 2008 [ct]
2 Mio ct
her countries, 6 Mio ct
Fig. 9.4 World wide production of CBN in 2008, total of 125.5 Mio ct = 25.11, error tolerance for the data is ±15 % [MCCL10c]