Metal Polishing Machine Guide

Polishing the Shining Effects

When the metal polishing machine is operated manually or triggered by programs, it is doing polishing and buffing process, and the procedure would cause shining on the metal. In other industrial sectors, other than metal working, polishing may be composite materials using a cloth wheel impregnated with cutting compounds or rouges, and the results would also be shining. The cloth buff will hold or carry the compound, while the compound does the cutting process.

Abrasive Methods

Polishing adopts the method called abrasive belt finishing to make the polished surface to be refined. Normally, polishing and buffing are used as alternative terms interchangeably in the industry but they are slight differences lay in between the two. Polishing refers to the processes that one utilized an abrasive means that is glued to the working wheel object. Buffing, on the other side, adopts a loose abrasive means which is applied to the working wheel object. Metal buffing machines are sometimes referred to as metal polishing machine. Polishing and buffing processes are highly customized methods and these two types of highly customized machines are utilized to polish soft metal materials such as copper and brass items. During the polishing operation process, the two mops spin at high speed RPM when the ON switch is pressed by the users and then the polish should be applied to the rotating mop before pressing the work against it.

Comparison

Compared with buffing, polishing is a more aggressive process compared to buffing. Buffing is less harsh in process, and leads to a smoother and brighter finish quality. In the metal working process, sometimes people also treat buffing as a way to enhance the appearance of an object and help to prevent the contamination and pollution of the buffed objects such as some instruments. Buffing and polishing can remove oxidation and create a reflective surface, and some exquisite procedure can even prevent corrosion in pipes.

For polishing and buffing to be achieved on the work pieces, the conditions of the materials are the first references. This references determine what types of abrasive means will be applied to the polished materials. If the material is unfinished, then workers would starts with a rough abrasive value, ranging from sixty to eighty maybe. After the primary roughing process each following stage utilizes a finer abrasive values adjusted by operators, such as 120, 220, 400, etc. The grit value will go higher and higher until the intended finish value is gained during the process.

The values of the grits are to be considered carefully. If one goes from rough grit item all the way high to finer grit, the rough grit will remove some obvious imperfection traces on the metal surface such as pits, lines, or nicks that can be seen by eyes without optic devices. Later, finer abrasive tools would leave very progressive finer lines which are not visible to natural human eyes and then they are to be observed only by microscopes. Once the gritting process goes up to the 8th of the finishing level, the polishing process and buffing process compounds will be attached to a higher speed polishing machine as well as polishing wheels.

Metal Treatment

How to process selected metal materials from the very first step to the final finishing procedure is an art of works that requires a lot of experiences and profound knowledge. Polishing the metal materials that are processed from casting and cutting, need to be very careful, because once the polishing process is not done well, the processes that has been done before may all be a waste of efforts, so polishing machines may be not as complicated as the milling and turning centers, they deserve users better attention supported by solid knowledge.

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