What Is Carborundum?

Carborundum is an artificial material with multiple industrial uses, including abrasives, metallurgical processes, jewelry making, leather tanning, rice processing and high temperature electrical electronics. Furthermore, this versatile substance can also be found in emery wheels and cutting tools.

Carborundum printing provides artists with an immediate, direct approach that liberates them from the technical aspects and planning requirements associated with other printmaking methods. Carborundum prints feature lush tones and colors.

It is a man-made stone

Carborundum is an engineered stone used as an abrasive. Featuring its diamond-like structure and extremely durable qualities, it can be found in numerous industrial settings including metallurgy, stone cutting, leather tanning, paper making, jewelry manufacturing and high temperature electrical heating elements – as well as consumer applications like automobile brakes/clutches/clutches, glassware/ceramics production and toothpaste production.

Carborundum is produced in blast furnaces at abrasive factories. Most carborundum collected is graded grit produced from small iridescent crystals. Carborundum can also be used as an alternative to graphite lubricants in printing presses; today it’s still commonly employed to grind metal intaglio plates and combined with other print techniques.

Carborundum printing provides an immediacy that other types of printmaking cannot match, its versatility and spontaneity appealing to those who find other processes too tedious for them. Its use may vary, from standalone pieces or combined with other techniques (etching, aquatint, drypoint or collagraph for instance), to using it alone or combined with them (etching, aquatint drypoint collagraph etc). But as it’s such a hard material it will scratch glass surfaces as well as all crystals except diamond – therefore it must be protected when using carborundum. Fence capitals or wall copings constructed out of this stone material but other uses exist too – just think!

It is a gemstone

Carborundum (SiC), is a crystalline mineral composed of carbon and silicon atoms that has many industrial uses, from abrasives to high temperature electrical heating elements. As the hardest man-made material produced on an industrial scale through melting of sand and carbon at high temperatures to producing SiC products. Due to its unique properties it finds use across industries.

Edward Goodrich Acheson first discovered it accidentally while trying to create artificial diamonds. While superheating corundum (natural aluminum oxide) with clay and powdered coke he observed blue crystals which he called carborundum; however, later analysis proved they were actually SiC crystals.

Carborundum stands out among other stones by being malleable and moldable, making it possible to create both wet and dry plates to produce intriguing textures and forms. Rubbed with cloth to expose its grit, then painted over with thinned out mixes of grit and binder allows for gradual transition from darkest to lighter tones of tone on each plate.

Carborundum prints can be created by mixing various grades of grit with varnish to form a paintable medium that can then be applied directly onto metal intaglio printing plates, holding onto ink when printed to produce rich and structured textures. Fine printmaker Henri Goetz first developed this technique during the 1960s.

It is a material

Carborundum is a hard, crystalline material made up of silicon and carbon atoms that is used as an abrasive. Similar in structure to diamond, its application as an abrasive is widespread throughout industry, especially given its excellent durability and resistance to wear; hence its name. Carborundum can also be an excellent material choice when grinding lithography stones for collagraph prints.

Jill has been supporting Jackson’s to expand their printmaking department since 2018. As an artist, writer, and teacher she recently returned to printmaking after retiring from ceramics practice.

Carborundum is a man-made material originally produced as an output from coal-burning furnaces and smelters. This synthetic mineral has many industrial applications, from use as an abrasive to grains bonded together into hard ceramics used for car brakes and clutches to plates used on bulletproof vests. Carborundum’s exceptional hardness and resistance to wear make it useful in high-tech electronic applications due to its chemical inertness; in particular its resistance to wear makes it great in high tech electronic applications; chemically inertness makes it chemically non-conductive allowing use in high tech electronics applications while printing uses use rough surfaces as draw-in surfaces to create texture gradients of tonal gradients within texturing in textual works on paper for creating textual effects within images as opposed to flat images on paper surfaces used on paper prints lithographic printing plates.

It is a mineral

Carborundum is an ultrahard and brittle form of carbon, commonly used as an abrasive and cutting tool material. Additionally, its excellent wear resistance and thermal conductivity make it a valuable material in industrial settings; furthermore its chemical inertness provides corrosion-resistance. Carborundum’s combination of strength, durability, low maintenance costs and popularity in the automotive sector makes it particularly sought after.

Carborundum first found widespread usage as an abrasive in 1891 when Edward Goodrich Acheson discovered it while trying to prepare artificial diamonds. By accident he synthesized a compound composed of silicon and carbon that he named carborundum after both its Latin name (carbon) and English equivalent corundum (a natural mineral).

Industrial scale production of silica powder now allows it to be used as an abrasive. Ceramic applications also benefit from it, with superhard ceramic plates used as bulletproof vest plates being created by sintering. Silica is also useful as an electronic application as its wide bandgap semiconductor property makes it useful in electronic applications as well.

Printmaking uses carborundum grit to create a granular surface on an aluminium plate for printing. A thick water-based binder such as PVA wash is then painted over it before fine carborundum grit is scattered across its surface in an undulating fashion – trapping ink in its crevices for later printing, producing prints featuring painted marks embossed into paper.