Choosing the right diamond polishing pad for your concrete surfaces is key to achieving a durable and visually stunning finish. Whether working on concrete floors, countertops, or polished concrete, using the correct grit and technique ensures long-lasting results with minimal environmental impact.
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This guide will help you choose the best diamond-impregnated pads for your project, focusing on some of our most popular brands.
What Are diamond polishing pads Used For?
Diamond polishing pads are specially designed for polishing and finishing hard surfaces such as concrete, stone, and marble. They contain diamond particles, which make them highly durable and efficient at smoothing rough surfaces and bringing out a glossy finish.
These pads are often used for a high-gloss, polished look for concrete countertops, concrete floors, and stone surfaces.
What Are the Benefits of Diamond Polishing?
Diamond polishing pads provide a superior finish, making them ideal for both professional and DIY applications. These pads enhance surface durability and longevity, especially when used on polished concrete and stone. They offer a higher gloss finish and are eco-friendly, often requiring fewer chemicals than other polishing methods.
While wet and dry polishing techniques are available, many professionals consider wet polishing to be the most effective method. This is due to its ability to reduce dust and achieve a high-quality finish.
Wet polishing pads:
Cool the surface
Extend tool life
Contribute to a safer work environment
Minimize airborne silica dust
For more in-depth information on the advantages of wet polishing, check out the benefits of wet polishing.
Essential Guide to Diamond-Impregnated Pads
Twister™ Diamond Cleaning Pads & TXP Xtreme Pads
The Twister line (formerly an HTC company until ) uses billions of microscopic diamonds. These mechanically clean and maintain floors, preserving their natural gloss and shine. Each pad comes in varying diamond sizes to tackle different levels of polishing.
Benefits of HTC Twister™ pads:
Economical: No chemicals required
Environmentally friendly: Uses only water
Creates higher gloss and cleanliness
Suitable for all floor types
Coverage Rates for HTC Twister™ Pads (Square Feet):
Twister TXP Red: 150,000 – 500,000
Twister Red: 75,000 – 150,000
Twister White: 300,000 – 350,000
Twister Yellow: 350,000 – 400,000
Twister Green: 400,000 – 500,000
Twister SuperClean: 400,000 – 700,000
Twister SuperGloss: 200,000 – 250,000
Twister pads are ideal for wet or dry polishing on concrete floors and other surfaces. They are highly effective in cleaning and polishing applications, delivering a long lifespan with minimal environmental impact.
TXP Xtreme Pads
TXP pads fall between HTC’s resin bond hybrids and Twister pads. They are versatile and can be used for deep scrubbing, stripping, and surface preparation on stone and concrete floors.
TXP pads are particularly useful for jobs requiring aggressive cutting, with results comparable to a 100-grit pad but offering refinement similar to 400-grit.
Applications include:
Heavily guarded, coated, or finished floors:
Deep scrubbing or stripping before recoating, with a lifespan of 100,000 to 500,000 square feet.
Stone or concrete floors:
Ideal for stain and etch repair, light honing, and surface prep. Lifespan varies between 50,000 to 200,000 square feet, depending on use.
STI SPIN-1 Diamond Pads
Substrate Technology, Inc. (STI) offers the SPIN-1 Pad System for polishing concrete in a fraction of the time. These natural hair pads, infused with diamonds, are particularly effective for maintaining polished concrete. Their lifespan exceeds 20,000 square feet, making them a cost-effective option for frequent use.
3M Scotch-Brite™ Diamond Plus Pads
The Scotch-Brite™ Purple and Sienna Diamond Floor Pads from 3M are known for their diamond formula, which cleans and polishes stone floors in a simplified one-step process.
Key benefits include:
Reduces labor and material costs by up to 50%
Easy to use and maintain
Eco-friendly, reducing the need for chemical floor finishes, strippers, or crystallizers
CPS SpinFlex Polishing Pad
CPS SpinFlex Pads are impregnated with a high concentration of microscopic diamonds, offering a higher heat rating than competing pads. These pads are versatile, mounting to any floor grinder, burnisher, or auto scrubber, and are excellent for cleaning and enhancing the floor’s shine.
RSP Rocky Diamond Impregnated Pads: Bringing Out the Shine
Runyon Surface Prep’s Rocky Diamond Impregnated Pads (DIPs) are made with natural hog hair, coated with diamond abrasive, and are available in 400, 800, , , and grit options.
These versatile pads are perfect for high-speed burnishing and can be used as the last step in polishing, periodic maintenance, or light rejuvenation/restoration processes.
Applications include:
Final Touch for Install:
High-speed burnishing with a grit pad or higher provides a glossy, clear finish, especially after applying a stain protector.
Maintenance & Light Restoration:
High-grit Rocky DIPs (+) can periodically restore the refinement level of a floor, while lower grits can improve severely degraded floors.
Densify and Burnish:
Rocky DIPs can enhance light reflectivity with a reactive densifier, bringing out the maximum shine potential for concrete floors.
Pads for Concrete Countertops and Other Specialized Applications
For specialized projects like concrete countertops, it’s crucial to choose the right grit and pad for the task. A common approach is using a 200-grit pad for initial polishing, followed by a -grit pad for a high-gloss finish.
As mentioned, wet polishing pads are often preferred for these tasks as they reduce dust and enhance the overall polishing process.
Diamond polishing pads offer the flexibility to work on wet or dry surfaces, ensuring a smooth, professional-grade finish.
Polished concrete and concrete countertops benefit from this method, as it highlights the surface’s aesthetic appeal while increasing durability.
Contact us today to discover the perfect solution for your next project.
Choosing the right resin diamond pad plays an essential role in effectively polishing concrete. If the contractor chooses the wrong pad it can result in a costly mistake.
If you’re trying to decide what kind of pad you need, you should consider a few factors before making your purchasing such as the bond of the pad, the grit of the pad, wet vs dry pads, and of course pricing.
Let’s take a look at these below.
Why use diamonds?
Diamonds are one of the hardest substances on earth, making them ideal for grinding extremely hard surfaces such as concrete.
Synthetic diamonds are most commonly used due to the ease of which they can be sorted and graded. This results in more control of the shape and hardness of the diamond. A diamond like this gets more consistent results in grinding and polishing.
Explaining the bond of the pad
The bond serves a couple purposes. Its primary function is to hold the diamond grit in place for the crystal to cut, grind, and shape the concrete. The pad also needs to wear appropriately in order to expose new, unused crystals to the surface.
The pads work by keeping the sharpest diamond grit on the surface to achieve the desired result. As a general rule the following guide will help you achieve the best results when using a resin:
Hard Bond: best for soft concrete
Medium Bond: best for medium concrete
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Soft Bond: best for hard concrete
Extra soft bond: best for very hard concrete
Wet Vs Dry Pads
Often you need to watch for whether the resin pad is designed for a wet or dry surface.
When it comes to choosing wet vs dry it is often a preference of the contractor; there are many advantages and disadvantages to both. The main difference between the two is the amount of dust control. With wet pads you will create a slurry paste, and with dry pads you will create a lot of airborne dust.
With either choice you will need a cleanup process to deal with the slurry or dust.
What to expect when comparing price
As you research what diamond resin pads you should buy, you will come across a wide range of pricing. There are a few reasons for this but one of the common reasons are the type of resin pads.
There are two types of resins for polishing: hybrid and polishing pads.
Hybrid resin pads are often used as a transitional pad between a metal and a polishing pad. At 6-8 mms, they are usually a bit thicker. Quality hybrid pads should last between 5,000 – 10,000 square feet.
Polishing resin pads have more of a plastic appearance. They are thinner than hybrids, and are typically 2-4 mms thick. Polishing resin pads should last between 10,000 – 15,000 square feet.
Overall, the price you will pay depends on the quality of your diamond pads. With less expensive pads you may only get 5,000-10,000 square feet rather than 10,000 – 15,000 square feet. The diamonds might not stay in the bond, making the pad useless.
A safe bet for anyone looking for a good quality diamond pad are some of the top brands in the industry such as Husqvarna, Lavina, Truloc, Stonecrete, STI, CPS, and many more. We carry a variety of these brands, so be sure to check them out.
Diamonds are an integral part of making concrete countertops — they’re used for rough grinding, shaping, honing and also polishing. However, there is a wide variety of diamond polishing pads on the market, and the concrete countertop contractor has little guidance as to which product will perform the best for his money.
It’s possible to find identical-looking pads that cost as little as $2 or as much as $100, so how can you tell what will give you good value and performance? Which is better wet or dry? And are thick polishing pads superior to thin ones?
Since concrete countertop makers grind, hone and polish concrete, it’s natural to look to two closely related industries for guidance: the polished concrete flooring industry and the granite countertop industry.
Polishing countertops vs. floors
Let us first look at the polished concrete flooring industry. Here diamonds are used in all aspects of refining a concrete floor to yield a mirror finish. Concrete floors are first ground and flattened, then progressively honed to remove scratches, and finally polished to achieve a smooth, glossy surface. This sequence can also be done on concrete countertops, so it’s natural to use the same grits of diamonds as are used with floors.
Thicker pads will last longer, but are stiffer and commonly prone to cupping when they dry out. Cupped pads don’t wear evenly, and often the outer area doesn’t actually make contact with the concrete. Photos courtesy of The Concrete Countertop Institute
However there are several key differences that separate the polished concrete flooring industry from concrete countertops, and these differences are important to choosing the right diamond products for processing concrete countertops.
The first key difference is the concrete. With polished concrete floors, the concrete is nearly always several weeks, months or even years old, which means the concrete has had time to cure and gain strength.
Another difference is that the polishing contractor usually isn’t the one who has poured the concrete, so the concrete’s makeup, its strength and other characteristics aren’t often known. Good polishing contractors perform hardness tests to match their diamonds to the concrete so they get the best results.
And finally, the machines that do the polishing are very different. Floor machines are big and heavy, with large polishing heads that use diamond tooling that comes in different shapes, including blocks, plugs, segments or discs. Each machine manufacturer has brand-specific tooling carefully designed to work with their machines. Tooling design and grit sequence are chosen by the manufacturer to provide optimum performance and results. The bottom line is that when polishing a floor, all you have to do is follow the manufacturer’s instructions for diamond selection and you’ll get good results.
Unlike floor polishing, the concrete countertop maker doesn’t have the luxury of working with or waiting for fully-cured concrete, so finding the right tooling and knowing when to use it is paramount to producing a high-quality surface.
Polishing concrete vs. granite
The other industry close to concrete countertops is the granite industry. Here there are many similarities, not only with the tooling but with what is done to the material.
Processing concrete countertops generally means using a hand-held polisher to grind, hone and polish the surface of the concrete. With granite it’s no different, and in fact many of the electric and air polishers are shared by both industries.
The main difference between granite and concrete lies in the physical makeup of these materials. While there are very many different types of stone that fall under the commercial term “granite,” they all are more similar to each other than they are to concrete.
Granite is a solid slab of stone made up of tightly knit mineral grains. These grains are mostly quartz and feldspar, two minerals that are very hard. In fact, quartz is 70 percent as hard as diamond, and both quartz and feldspar are harder than steel. So the diamond tooling designed for granite has to deal with efficiently wearing away a very hard, solid material. Additionally, most granite fabricators need to polish only the edges of cut slabs, since the surface of the slabs comes pre-polished from the quarry.
Concrete is very different. It is a nonuniform material made up of harder aggregates bound together by a softer cement matrix. The aggregates vary in size, shape, surface roughness, hardness and mineralogy. The cement matrix varies from mix to mix, and more importantly, its properties vary day by day, since most concrete is very young and still gaining strength when it is being ground and polished.
A dry polishing pad with a resin binder. Inexpensive pads can use soft resin binders that wear quickly. Buying a more expensive, higher-quality pad can save you money in the long run versus buying multiple cheaper pads.
When to polish
The challenge faced by all concrete countertop manufacturers is to be able to produce a smooth, scratch-free surface (polished or not) as soon as possible after casting.
Once the concrete has gained enough strength, the cement paste is strong enough to keep the aggregates from tearing out and also hard enough to be cut smoothly without eroding. Concrete cuts evenly and responds more like solid stone only when it is hard and strong enough. A sure sign of this is when the aggregate and the cement paste are cut smooth and flush with each other during processing.
Usually it takes about two days of curing for most concrete used in countertops to be strong enough to grind without damaging the pad or the concrete. It often takes more than four to five days for the concrete to become hard enough to begin the polishing process.
If concrete is processed too soon, the cement paste is too soft and too weak to bind the aggregates. Diamonds grab and tear the small sand grains out of the paste, causing them to tumble between the concrete surface and the diamond pad. This quickly chews up the concrete, leaving a rough and uneven surface, and it rapidly wears away the diamond pad. Even the best diamond pads will wear away far more rapidly than they should if the concrete is too young and too soft for processing.
Dry polishing pads with a ceramic binder, shown here, can help prevent smearing and glazing.
Choosing your pad
What makes a good polishing pad for concrete?
There are many different sources, names, styles and prices for diamond pads on the market. This can be very confusing, and what often happens is selection comes down to price. This is unfortunate, because in many cases a cheap pad will cost you more in the long run.
Shopping by price may be tempting, since so many diamond pads look alike and all are described similarly, often being sold “for granite, engineered stone and concrete.” However, choosing the right pad matters, especially if you want the pad to cut well, last long and not cost a fortune.
Diamond quality
Diamonds are the expensive part of the pad, so it’s fair to gauge quality with price. However there are some very expensive pads designed for polishing stone that would be a waste on concrete, simply because concrete isn’t the same as stone and the benefits from buying and using such an expensive pad would never be realized.
The industrial diamonds used in polishing pads and in other diamond tooling (such as turbo cup wheels and profile wheels) come in different grades and grits, just like sandpaper. For example, a 200-grit pad uses smaller diamonds than a 50-grit pad, so it makes smaller scratches and produces a smoother surface.
However, not all 200-grit pads are the same. Cheap pads may have some diamonds in them that are a 200-grit size, but most of the diamonds may be much smaller. Even worse, there may be a handful of larger diamonds that got by due to poor quality control. So the bulk of the diamonds in the pad are too fine to cut like a 200-grit pad should, and the few larger diamonds will scratch and gouge the surface.
High-quality diamond pads use carefully graded diamonds that are all nearly the same size, and the density of the diamonds in the pad is higher too. This results in faster cutting and better surface quality, making the more expensive pad a better value.
The binder
The binder that encapsulates the diamonds is just as important as the diamonds, and it has a profound effect on the performance and longevity of the pad. Binder materials range from metal to ceramic to resin, and different materials are used for specific applications. Binder hardness matters too — a binder that’s too soft will wear away quickly when processing an abrasive material like concrete.
Metal binders are generally reserved for highly abrasive cup wheels, in which very coarse diamonds need a hard-wearing matrix to bind them. Metal-bond cup wheels are thick, rigid and designed for aggressive and rapid material removal. These usually don’t have grit numbers but are similar to a 15- to 30-grit equivalent.
Cup wheels designed for grinding granite and hard stones generally have a softer metal matrix. Hard stone calls for a softer matrix so new diamonds are continually exposed as the matrix wears away. A hard matrix wouldn’t wear away fast enough, and the cup wheel would glaze over.
Opposite to this are cup wheels designed for limestone, marble and concrete. In these tools the matrix is harder. Soft concrete is very abrasive, and this requires a harder matrix with a slower wear rate that extends the life of the tool without affecting cutting performance. Using a soft matrix tool on softer (often very young) concrete will shorten tool life.
Nearly all wet polishing pads use a resin binder, and here too resins vary. It’s very rare that a pad distributor will describe the pad makeup with any meaningful detail, so here personal observations and reliance on trusted recommendations are necessary to make a good choice.
Too often the least expensive pads use soft resin binders that wear away quickly. If you end up using three times as many pads as you would with a pad that costs twice as much, you are not saving money in the end.
Ceramic binders tend to wear better and stand up to higher temperatures than resin pads. Many dry pads use a ceramic binder, which helps to prevent the smearing and glazing that can occur when a resin-based dry pad is run at a speed that’s too high.
Size matters
Larger-diameter pads (such as 7-inch) are much more stable on large, flat areas than smaller-diameter pads (3-inch and 4-inch). However, larger pads become unstable on narrow sections of concrete.
A 7-inch diameter pad won’t stay flat or cut evenly on a 3-inch-wide strip of concrete. They are also difficult to use on the vertical edges of countertops. Only larger, more powerful polishers can use 7-inch pads. Most electric and all air polishers are lighter-duty, best suited for 4-inch and 5-inch pads.
Small-diameter pads are less stable and more likely to gouge when processing large areas on a big polisher, but with a smaller polisher (especially a pneumatic polisher) they work very well for processing edges and narrow sections.
A good all-around size is a 5-inch diameter pad. Many low-cost polisher package deals come with 4-inch pads. These can be difficult to control with hand-held polishers on concrete. Smaller 4-inch pads are really meant for use on hard stone, which is much less prone to gouging than concrete.
Thickness matters too
Cupping caused uneven wear on this thick pad.
Diamond pads come in a variety of thicknesses, from around 2 millimeters to 8 millimeters thick.
Thicker pads will last longer, but thicker pads are stiffer and commonly prone to cupping when they dry out. Cupped pads don’t wear evenly, and often the outer area of the pad doesn’t actually make contact with the concrete, so although you are paying for a 7-inch pad, it’s wearing like a 5-inch pad.
Thin pads don’t last as long as thick pads (especially when aggressively cutting), but they are more flexible. This is a big advantage when honing or polishing inside curved integral sinks. Thin pads are easier to keep flat with a rigid backer pad. Thin pads are the most versatile when matched with the right backer.
The pattern
The pattern molded into the cutting surface plays a role in the life span and the cutting quality.
Generally pads used for coarse honing (30 and 50 grit) should have an open pattern with wide and deep channels. Pads with open channels allow the abrasive cutting residue to be ejected quickly and effectively. This greatly increases the life span of the pad when aggressive stock removal is performed.
Pads with many narrow channels are best suited for polishing. Narrow channels clog more readily when aggressive cutting is performed and when insufficient water flows out from under the disc, but polishing (using grits 400 through 3,000) only generates small amounts of cuttings, so clogging is not an issue when polishing. Some well-made pads that have large open channels can also be used for polishing.
As you can see, there are many factors to consider in choosing a diamond pad. Start with assessing what you plan on doing with it.
Are you using it for heavy stock removal?
Is it for general honing?
Are you polishing the concrete to a high gloss?
Then consider the variables I’ve outlined to make your choice. Only then should you look at price.
Using the right diamond pads for the job will make it faster and easier for you to create a high-quality finish for your concrete countertops.
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