Characterization of particulate samples is widely used in many industrial applications including abrasive machining. Regarding granite machining with diamond-segmented circular sawblades, there is seemingly little or no published material on the size characterization of the generated chip particles in relation to productivity and efficiency of the process. The work described in this paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature. With this aim, a granite workpiece material was subjected to a series of sawing tests. Cutting depth and feed rate were varied at different levels to produce three different test designs leading to 10 different material removal rates ranging from 60 to 240cm(2)/min. Particle sizing of the chips generated at each individual removal rate were quantitatively determined by means of image-processing system. Also, specific energy and process forces were determined at each employed removal rate. The general trends observed on the whole showed that the size and size distribution of the generated chips changed as a function of material removal rate, specific energy, and process forces. More importantly, despite the complexity of the process, it was found that a particular mean chip size can be designated corresponding to near-optimum machining conditions in terms of process productivity and efficiency.