Compare artificial granite and artificial marble

Arti­fi­cial gran­ite and mar­ble are mate­ri­als that are used for the man­u­fac­ture of small archi­tec­tur­al forms, inte­ri­or and exte­ri­or design details of build­ings, coun­ter­tops, bar coun­ters, kitchen sinks, win­dow sills, etc. Our experts have made a com­par­a­tive analy­sis of the prop­er­ties of these mate­ri­als, their advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages, which will help you in case of dif­fi­cul­ty in choos­ing a prod­uct from a par­tic­u­lar mate­r­i­al.

Note that we will com­pare mate­ri­als that are obtained by cast­ing from a mix­ture in which poly­mer resins play the role of a binder. This is due to the fact that there are oth­er mate­ri­als, also called arti­fi­cial mar­ble, that are made in oth­er ways. Such types of arti­fi­cial stone have prop­er­ties that dif­fer from those of cast gran­ite and mar­ble, and have oth­er appli­ca­tions, so we will not com­pare them with them, but we will describe the fea­tures of such mate­ri­als below.

Comparative table of characteristics of cast granite and marble

Disadvantages of cast granite and marble

Com­mon dis­ad­van­tages of cast stone prod­ucts include:

1. risk of dam­age when wash­ing with abra­sives, scratch­ing when exposed to sharp objects, such as when clean­ing with a wire brush, chip­ping when heavy objects are dropped;

2. rel­a­tive­ly high cost com­pared to oth­er mate­ri­als. For exam­ple, in the man­u­fac­ture of sinks, stain­less steel is also used, which is much cheap­er;

3. high weight, which requires, for exam­ple, for coun­ter­tops, bar coun­ters or sinks, the con­struc­tion of strong sup­port struc­tures.

As can be seen from the table, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of these mate­ri­als prac­ti­cal­ly describe their advan­tages, and most of the char­ac­ter­is­tics, includ­ing dis­ad­van­tages, are the same for both types. Small dif­fer­ences con­cern only the abra­sion index — it is high­er for mar­ble, and the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the effect of high tem­per­a­ture on one and the oth­er mate­r­i­al.

Con­clu­sion: Cast mar­ble and gran­ite are sim­i­lar in their qual­i­ties, there are only slight dif­fer­ences in favor of arti­fi­cial gran­ite, so the choice of one of the two mate­ri­als is a mat­ter of per­son­al taste.

Manufacturing technology of products from artificial granite

Liyevy gran­ite is made from a raw mix, which includes: acrylic resin as a binder, nat­ur­al gran­ite stone chips, quartz sand, hard­en­ing accel­er­a­tors, and a pig­ment that gives the col­or of nat­ur­al gran­ite stone to fin­ished prod­ucts. At the same time, min­er­al fillers make up about 80% of the vol­ume, the remain­ing 20% ​​are poly­mer binders and oth­er addi­tives.

The tech­nol­o­gy for man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts from cast gran­ite con­sists in the phased imple­men­ta­tion of the fol­low­ing oper­a­tions: prepa­ra­tion, dosage and mix­ing of the com­po­nents of the raw mass, addi­tion of a hard­en­er and fill­ing in forms. After the mold is filled, a chem­i­cal reac­tion of poly­mer­iza­tion takes place under the influ­ence of the addi­tive, as a result of which the prod­uct hard­ens. Some prod­ucts of com­plex shape, such as sinks or wash­basins, are rein­forced with fiber­glass. After the final set of strength dur­ing the day, the fin­ished prod­uct is released from the mold and pol­ished.

Production technology of products from lime marble

The pro­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy of cast mar­ble prod­ucts is almost iden­ti­cal to that of gran­ite. The only dif­fer­ence is that mar­ble chips of dif­fer­ent frac­tions are used instead of gran­ite chips, and poly­ester resin is used as a binder instead of acrylic. Pig­ments of a dif­fer­ent range of col­ors can also be used, giv­ing the appear­ance inher­ent in nat­ur­al stone. In the pro­duc­tion of some types of prod­ucts, espe­cial­ly sinks and wash­basins, liq­uid glass is used, with the help of which a water­proof lay­er is cre­at­ed on the sur­face of the prod­ucts.

Other types of artificial marble

Oselkovy marble

Gyp­sum arti­fi­cial mar­ble, or in oth­er words — osselkovy stone, is made on the basis of a gyp­sum binder. Skin glue, water and pig­ments are added to the raw mix­ture, mixed and mold­ed into prod­ucts, which are pol­ished after hard­en­ing. Oselkovy stone is used to make ele­ments of inte­ri­or dec­o­ra­tion and dec­o­ra­tion — bor­ders, plinths, cor­nices, bas-reliefs, rosettes, fac­ing tiles, etc. Pig­ments of dif­fer­ent col­ors pro­vide a col­or­ing that mim­ics the appear­ance of dif­fer­ent types of nat­ur­al stone.

Artificial marble based on cement

Cement-based arti­fi­cial stone prod­ucts are made from a raw mix that includes: Port­land cement, slaked lime, nat­ur­al stone chips, quartz sand and water. From the con­crete mix­ture obtained in this way, prod­ucts are mold­ed that are used in land­scap­ing as small archi­tec­tur­al forms — flow­er­pots, bench­es, foun­tains, urns, park sculp­tures, etc. Con­crete arti­fi­cial mar­ble is also used to cov­er floors and stairs.