Antifriction material
The term antifriction material is composed of two Latin words:
anti = prevent, against, and
frictio = friction
Therefore, a material that has little friction and thus very good sliding properties. These properties include many plastics, e.g. Polyamide or Teflon. However, the sawing process has many other requirements: there are abrasive dust, high pressures, high belt speeds, thermal stress and a wide variety of impurities such as sand and liquids.
The CHACO antifriction material is optimized for all these requirements: it is much harder and more resistant than plastic guiding elements, i. it wears off significantly less quickly. Thus, the saw guide is maintained over a long time, downtime for guide changes are drastically postponed. The improvement is often several times the original value. However, unlike metallic and ceramic guiding elements, antifriction material is resilient enough to accommodate variations in saw blade thickness, particularly at the welded bead. Hard guiding elements hit and damage the blade exactly where it is most vulnerable anyway. Band breakage means unplanned machine downtime and costly damage on the machine itself.