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Surface Finishing Tutorial

#116 Surface Adjustment Methods

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March 9, 2012

For surface treatments, the same surface treatment will yield varying appearances depending on the preparations used due to the amount, quality, and directions of light reflections. Most metal surfaces contain imperfections such as variations of base metal coarseness, non-uniformity, unevenness, and surface ingrained contaminations. It is not possible to obtain satisfactory decorative finish with such imperfect surfaces. In order to counter such problems, some means of mechanical polishing operations are needed. Such processes are called "Surface Adjustments" of materials.

Various surface conditions are desired based on the products usage purposes. Some surfaces are required to be mirror finished, hairline finished where the lines are formed unidirectional, or satin finish with random light reflections. When the original material surfaces largely differ from what is required for the final surface conditions, several steps of grinding/polishing processes are applied to obtain the desired final conditions.

In order to indicate various surface conditions, Surface Roughness expression is typically used. There are various polishing methods such as: dry blasting, liquid blasting, paper polishing, brushing, steel wool, buff polishing, and milling. The process outcome of these methods differ and they are shown in [Fig.1]. The polishing methods and the surface roughness obtained can be seen in the figure.

[Fig.1] Mechanical polishing processes and obtainable surface roughness (μm)

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