Cnc Polishing

[wrustle]

(05-04-2013, 10:55 PM)Tony Wells Wrote: You can get a lot from using brushes like that. A sub of mine did a lot of plastic mold work for another customer and they had tons of polish work in those molds, because they product comes out a perfect replica of the mold, right down to the feedlines. The used mostly tooling from BRM on theirs, but also some fancy electro-chemical process. I checked into it for deburring some wireways in an unreachable area on some parts I used to make. I had a hollow wand that you used kind of like a mini die grinder, but an electrolyte was pumped out if it and when current passed from the part through the electrolyte back to the wand, a process similar to reverse plating took place and the burrs simply "washed" off, leaving a perfectly smooth, radiused edge.

Your work looks very good. Anodizing will give it a more uniform appearance generally.

Thanks Tony, and you're right about the anodize, it does "soften" the look of some parts while enhancing it on others.

A lot depends on the type of anodize and the amount of etch (if any) the part endures. A typical commercial anodize will get an etch of about 10-30 seconds depending upon the vendor and how they run their line.

Once a specification is attached to the drawing the process becomes more involved as documented procedures with regard to process and lengths of those processes is adhered too.

Any time you want to have a consistent look and color to any part going for anodize, a specification part will always come back looking the same from any vendor......well, it should anyways, if they're doing their job properly.

Here's a couple of pics of the parts after Clear Anodize. These were done to a Military Specification. MIL-A-8625 Type 2, Class 1.

The silk screened customer name and logo have been edited out.





By requiring the parts to have this specification finish, I can come back, make these parts, and they will look exactly the same as ones done previous from the anodizer.

Here's a link to the specification for those who find this stuff interesting;

http://www.anodizing.org/Publications/bulletin_3.html

Now, here's some other pieces we did for another customer.

These are some (approx. .250" thick x 3" x 3" 6061) aluminum covers that go on the front of some high end 3D Surround Sound Processors by Krell......as in $30K.....yes.....$30,000.00!



These were highly polished and black anodized.

In the picture you have the finished part accompanied by pieces out of the tumbler ready for polishing before anodize.




These were the same part, however these needed to be Clear Anodized and had to have visible grain lines going horizontally across the face to match the grain lines on the face plate of the product. See the link below the picture for the final product view.



http://www.krellonline.com/evolution707.html

Best Regards,
Russ