Strategy for Sanding/Polishing/Lapping Stainless Steels

mitch260 · Apr 11, 2020

I am wondering if anyone has a detailed/scientific method for polishing stainless steel, or any other metal for that matter. What I'm wondering is if anyone is actually measuring the surface roughness of a part in order to decide what grit to start with and/or sanding/lapping to a specific surface roughness and know what grit to end up at.

Obviously trial and error could tell me this info, but for the parts I am wanting to do this on they would need to be destroyed to measure the surface roughness and they aren't the cheapest so I'd like to speed up the learning curve lol

Any insight would be appreciated! Thank you,

Spruewell · Apr 11, 2020

Do you have any idea what the roughness of the surface is starting out at? And what roughness are you trying to achieve? I would expect that the grit of your abrasive would depend heavily on that. The abrasive should be finer than the surface you are trying to improve

Milland · Apr 11, 2020

My thought is that due to the softness and propensity of most stainless to gall, I'd focus of flooding of the workpiece/abrasive interface with lubricant, and even better, filtering the lube to remove particulates.

Beyond that, it would be a matter of size and shape of the parts, knowing if geometric accuracy was important or just cosmetics, alloy, etc. before more advice could be given.

GregSY · Apr 11, 2020

Sure, lots of people do. Their methods vary depending on what they are trying to achieve and what material they are working with and how much of it they have to do. Your question is so open-ended...so here's your answer: Use increasingly finer grits of abrasive until you reach the desired finish.

DanASM · Apr 11, 2020

I lap stainless all the time. 240 grit emery paper. Sometimes I put some lube oil or a splash of Kerosene on the paper.

I do this to get rid of the tit after turning SS. Its not for surface finish requirements but it does come out flat and smooth. I tried 80 grit and 120 grit in the past and it just shredded the paper too quickly and gave a rough finish. 240 grit seems to work great and gice a smooth finish.

Sometimes I chuck up parts in a lathe and hold a scotch bright pad over it to improve finish.

Conrad Hoffman · Apr 11, 2020

If you have to destroy the part to get access to measure the surface finish, how do you get access to lap it? Do you need good geometry or just good surface finish. The two are linked and sometimes one makes the other more difficult. Need way more info.

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Strategy for Sanding/Polishing/Lapping Stainless Steels

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