Better Cutting Porcelain Tile
Porcelain tile as a facing building material allows you to implement various design ideas: from it lay tiles on the terraces, mount the surfaces of the steps, decorate them with facades, walls and floor coverings. Over, the possibility of combining various textures and colors in porcelain stoneware allows you to create real masterpieces in the interior. However, in most cases, when working with porcelain stoneware, its preliminary processing, in particular cutting, is required.
Since ceramic granite belongs to solid building materials, its processing technologies involve the use of a special tool. At the moment, there are two areas in the cutting of porcelain tile: in a straight line and figure cutting. In connection with this classification, cutting technologies are separated, and hence the means of its implementation. To determine how to cut porcelain tiles, it is necessary to know the features of the use of existing tools that are used to solve such problems.
Porcelain cutting in a straight line
As a rule, when laying ceramic granite, it becomes necessary to expose its tiles to direct cutting. Since the dimensions of the area to be trimmed very rarely fit into the aggregate size of all rows of tiles, it is necessary to trim the edges of the outer elements. So, how to cut porcelain tile?
Glass cutter
In general, not the most popular tool for processing porcelain, however with small amounts of work can be limited to them. The tool is convenient to use and cuts the tile exactly in the place where the hand holds. Its use is justified in cases where it makes no sense to purchase a tile cutter for the sake of processing a small number of tiles.
Manual tile cutter
Simple and comfortable a tool that allows you to cut off excess parts from the tile. The granite element is fixed in the device itself, after which a cutting wheel passes through it. As a result, the tile breaks into two halves.
Electric tile cutter
Under the condition of operation that complies with all the rules, a “diamond” electric tile cutter can become quite serious equipment. The device allows you to perform perfectly smooth cuts with smooth or slightly rounded sides, which can not be said about its manual counterpart, which leaves sharp and broken edges. After performing several cuts for many beginning masters, it becomes clear what is better to cut porcelain tiles. Over, the electric tile cutter has advantages not only over the standard device, but also over other tools used in cutting tiles.
Better Cutting Porcelain Tile
Angle Grinder
A straight grinder, which is capable of performing series of figured cuts and parallel cuts. But, since this is a manual device, you can not do without deviations when cutting. Sometimes there are even edges with a serrated surface, which is impossible when working with an electric tile cutter.
To understand how to cut porcelain tiles with an angle grinder, it is worth noting that this cutting technology does not differ from that used when processing other materials. But in most cases, a diamond blade for dry cut with respect to porcelain stoneware can only be used as an option for “rough” processing, although if perfectly smooth edges are not needed, then the angle grinder will come first in the processing of ceramic granite in cutting speed.
Porcelain Tile Cutting
Hole Saw
If you need to cut porcelain tiles into straight lines, then the choice is quite wide, but with curly cuts it is a little more difficult. The scope of use of a circular saw equipped with a carbide tip extends to porcelain stoneware. It is also used for create rounded holes in hard materials such as cement tiles and stone. With a circular saw, you can cut ceramic granite of any quality: soft or hard, but cutting tiles with a glazed surface is slow.
Nippers
Of all the cutting devices, this is the simplest. Without nippers, it is sometimes very difficult to do when laying porcelain tiles in residential premises. Most often nippersapply for irregularly shaped ceramic granite.
Ballerina
This tool specializes in rounded holes in porcelain stoneware. The main advantage of the ballerina is that the characteristics of the planned opening can be different, since the parameters of the incisors are adjusted manually. But the ballerina slice usually comes out uneven and curved, so when processing tiles it is not often used, although special nozzles for ceramic granite are sold on the market. In addition, the centering of the device is quite complicated, which can damage the ballerina and the tile itself.
Hand Tile Cutting Technology
Since the most common way of processing ceramic granite at home is manual tile cutting, it is worth considering in more detail how to cut porcelain tiles with this tool.
Before performing a direct cut, you must marker to apply cutting lines on porcelain tile. Next, you need to put the element on the basis of the device, correlating the level of the cutting wheel and the cut line. If you plan to make several slices with the same size, then the bounding box should be fixed with a bolt in one position. Tile needed hold with one hand, and in the other hold the tile cutter handle.
Then you need to raise the handle so that wheel affected surface the upper part of the element, after which we pull the handle towards us and cut the granite. Necessary perform no more than one pass with the wheel, at the same time, press with a slight pressure, which is enough to indicate the cut line. As a rule, if a series of continuous cuts are made along this line, the result is poor quality.
To separate the porcelain tiles according to the designated cut, special handles should be installed at the base of the handle “Wings” at the level of the lower part. It is advisable to paste the edges of the “wings” with a special tape, which will save the tile from unnecessary prints and traces. Some specialists fix element in a suitable position, after which they press the handle with your fingers and gently hit it with your palm.
If the measured part has not broken away, then hit even harder. It happens that the tile does not break even after a few strokes, but it does not matter how to cut the porcelain tile with a tile cutter, since this element is no longer suitable for use as a decorative coating. It remains to begin work with a new tile.