Latest company case about Xiamen Pinhe Precision Technology Co., Ltd Certifications

The multi-wire cutting machine actually started out in the solar industry, where it was used to cut silicon wafers. The key technology here is the diamond wire — it's basically a thin metal wire coated with diamond particles through electroplating. As the wire moves, the diamonds on it grind against the material being cut, which allows for precise slicing.

Diamond wire started being used in the solar silicon wafer industry around 2015. Between 2015 and 2017, it completely replaced the older slurry-based wire cutting process, with over 10,000 machines in operation. Then, from 2017 to 2020, the same technology was adopted in the rare earth magnetic materials industry, again with more than 10,000 machines deployed. Since then, it's also been successfully applied to other hard and brittle materials like sapphire, optical glass, and graphite.

Thanks to the rapid growth of China's solar industry, Chinese companies now dominate over 95% of the global market for both solar and magnetic materials. Because of that, it's really only in China that the stone-cutting wire saw could have emerged.

As diamond wire cutting technology became more mature, the whole ecosystem — from the cutting machines to the wires themselves and supporting supply chains — grew rapidly, which also drove down costs and improved performance.

Starting in 2018, a company called Pinhe began exploring how this diamond wire technology could be applied to the stone industry. But here's the catch: traditional multi-wire cutting machines were built for small, uniform materials like silicon wafers, magnetic blocks, or sapphire, usually something like 800mm x 210mm x 210mm in size.

Cutting stone is a whole different story. You’re talking about materials that are 10 times bigger, with irregular sizes and inconsistent composition. That makes things a lot more challenging — the cutting speed, cost, machine design, and stability requirements are all totally different.

So even though the basic principle of stone wire saws comes from the silicon wafer cutting machines used in solar, the actual machines used for stone are in a completely different league. The early stages of development were really tough, and there were lots of obstacles to overcome.