WIRE SAW

In a wire saw that serves for cutting polygonal, columnar bricks out of an ingot of a generally inorganic crystalline material, more particularly a semiconductor material, a cutting yoke (5) having at least two angularly offset saw wire fields is provided that is displaceable in the saw feed direction (7). The yoke is coupled to a carrier (38) by means of an assembly of two rails (40, 42). In this manner, the yoke (5) is easily removable from the process chamber (1) of the wire saw by pulling one rail (42) out of the other rail (40) in order to perform maintenance operations etc. The saw wire in the cutting yoke (5) is guided in an essentially meander-shaped path so that the cutting wire essentially only extends in the wire fields (sections 14, 16) and on the sides of the frame (20) of the cutting yoke (5).