Metamorphosed carbonate bearing rocks contain mainly calcite, dolomite and secondary minerals which are their Mohs scale hardness over five. These minerals depend on chemical compositions of rocks, pressure and temperature condition of metamorphism are developed such as diopside, tremolite, actinolite, garnet, epidote, wollastonite, amphiboles. These secondary mineral assemblages have contents % 10 and % 30 in calc-silicate marbles. These minerals assemblages hardness change 5–7.5, abrasiveness specifications and minerals boundary conditions (textures) showing different variety. These conditions exhibit some problems production of marble slabs. Mineral composition of calc-silicatic marble used in this study is calcite, ±garnet, diopside, ±quartz, wollastonite. The percentages of minerals are 60–70 % calcite, 28–35 % wollastonite, 1–4 % diopside, 0–3 % quartz, 0–0.5 % garnet. The sawing problems of calc-silicate marbles during sawing with circular saws were realized.
Calc-silicate Kaman-Kırşehir marble deposits location is 170 km far from Ankara-Tuerkiye (Figure 1). Calc-silicate marble deposit is massive apparent schistose structure covers about 4 km by 1 km of regionally metamorphosed sedimentary limestones. The thickness of deposit about 100 m is indicated. The strike of bed is NW-SE direction and dip angle changes 10°-30° NE and SW (Figure 2). The industrial rock can be evaluated as wollastonite deposit [1,2]. The main problem is extreme wearing of circular saw blade segments during the cutting of marble. The subject of research is the assessment and minimizes the wearing of saw blade in this marble. After mineralogical and petrographical investigations, sawing operations on this rock were performed. Firstly, suitable sawing conditions (saw blade peripheral speed and advance rate) were determined by sawing tests. Then sawing operations were realized at determined sawing conditions. According to results, the sawing problems of calc-silicate marbles were evaluated.
The rock is white and light colored green. The thickness of wollastonite band is 1%3 cm and calcite band is 3%10 cm (Figure 3). Tamadağ Formation calc-silicate rocks mineral contents determined by microscope: - Diopside + Wollastonite ± Garnet ± Quartz + Calcite - Wollastonite + Quartz - Tremolite + Diopside + Wollastonite + Calcite The mineral composition of this metacarbonate rock changes to calcite or wollastonite band structure. Therefore mineral percentage also changes to this conditions. Microscopic thin section studies of these rocks do not representative because of very small area taking into consideration. Instead of this it is decided to use image analysis technique for determining of mineral composition percent (%). The rock sample was cut to 20 cm by 20 cm or 20 cm by 30 cm and 1 cm thick slabs. These slab surfaces were polished and have taken the pictures by a digital camera. Then, the images of slabs were adopted to CLEMEX Vision PE 3.5 software [4]. Calcite-wollastonite color index problem is solved by calcite staining (Figure 4). The mineral percentages of Kaman calc-silicate marble were determined by Clemex Vision software and were given in Table 1.
