Polished Concrete can be polished both Wet and Dry;
Grinding or polishing wet is the original method used, as it keeps the dust down as well as cools the diamond tools in use. This was critical in the past for the Resin bond diamond tools as the resins used in the past could not take the high temperatures during the polishing steps. Currently there is a wide assortment of Resins that can take high temperatures and can even be used in the lower grinding steps. Levetec stocks budget polishing pads that can be used either wet or dry, as well as the high performance Italian Phenolic resins that can only be used dry. The reason that contractors wanted to grind dry was that the wet method produces a thick slurry that is hard to clean up and can take quite a lot of time to clean up. Grinding dry saves on labor and equipment that is needed on a job site.
Water can increases the life of the resin pads but shortens the life of metal bonds as the slurry erodes the metal between the diamonds in the metal bond pads.
Using dust extraction vacuum systems equipped with Hepa filters will capture virtually all of the dust that is produces during grinding and polishing.
It must be noted that the vacuum used must be equipped with the Hepa filters which captures the silicates in concrete that are as small as 2-3 microns.
Silicates are produced in small enough quantity not to be noticed in the air, and these will blow right through a regular filter and back into the air.
