Mass finishing isn’t a term that everyone would necessarily know. Mention it to most
people and you’re likely to be met with a blank stare or a look of bewilderment. Interestingly though we all come in to contact with the things it does on a daily basis. So to explain this we thought we’d take you through a day in the life of Rösler mass finishing:
When designers and manufacturing companies specify surface finishes more often than not we’re talking in micrometres (µm), but what exactly is a µm?
1 µm is 0.001mm or one thousandth of one millimetre. In other words it is a very fine measurement and as such it can be hard to comprehend. So the best way to understand it for many of us is to compare it to everyday things we’d know, such as a cigarette paper, human hair, paperclip wire or needle.
This image from our partners Haas illustrates how these items measure up and what a µm equates to in comparison. For more details on their range of machining centres please visit their website at: http://www.haas-schleifmaschinen.de/en/
In comparison to microinches (written as µin or µ”) 1 µm = approximately 40 µ”. 1 µ” being equal to one millionth of an inch (0.000001”). (So a 15µm surface finish = 600µ” and a 320µ” surface finish = 8µm as examples of conversions).
To understand more about surface reading types and how they are calculated, please see our post on A Guide to Understanding Surface Roughness Measurement Types
Post written by
Stephen Lewis-Brammer
General Manager
The Super Finishing removes the asperities that are inherent in the manufacturing process. By safely removing these microscopic peaks, the Super Finishing process leaves a much more uniform surface that reduces friction and allows for increased lubrication capability. While the dimensional integrity of the part remains intact, the result is an improved component that will operate at lower temperatures, have increased durability, quieter operation and increased time between maintenance.
Better surface properties on gear teeth and other functional surfaces are responsible for:
Continue reading The Reasons Why Super Finishing Enhances Component Performance
PureFinish® is a post-processing technique. This technique allows stainless steel to be finished to a smoother surface with a low and reproducible SRI value below 0.010. In practice, this produces a surface with a very low degree of adhesion characteristics. The PureFinish® treatment has been extensively tested by TNO. TNO, a Dutch organisation is the leading institute for Applied Scientific Research. The SRI value (Soil Retention Index) was investigated because this parameter most accurately describes the relationship between surface structure, contamination and cleanliness.
Within the food and pharmaceutical industries hygiene is a top priority, not only for safety but also to prevent contamination and to ensure the quality of the product in terms of taste, aroma and appearance. The occurrence of contamination through bacteria, proteins or other elements must therefore be prevented. Process plants require a defined, homogeneous and reproducible surface for all parts that come in contact with food, beverage and pharmaceutical products.
Continue reading PureFinish® Stainless Steel Treatment For Optimum Hygiene
These machines are capable of cleaning and descaling complex welded fabricated components and constructions. They are designed specifically to clean wide head and base plates, ribs, re-enforcements along with the welded seams after construction.
All round blasting is achieved after 3D simulation and actual placement of the blast wheels in the optimum locations of the blast chamber. The chamber can be designed with 2 blast zones, each zone designed to blast clean the surface of the infeed side and the second, the outfeed side and end. As the fabrication passes through the chamber, all gussets, re-enforcements, ribs, angles are descaled and cleaned to Sa Swedish standards and with the desired profile to optimise the adhesion of the coating to be applied.
The equipment requires to easily meet the most stringent customer specifications regarding surface cleanliness and cost, for steel traders, steel fabricators, equipment manufacturers, shipyards and manufacturers of wind power stations. In wind power applications roller conveyor systems are utilised for shot blasting of the steel sheets or plate required for the fabrication of the towers for off-shore and land based windmills.
Typical applications fall into these fabricating industries:
Partners for Steel
There are distinct benefits to be offered by the cooperation between the manufacturers of both shotblast equipment and multispindle drill/saw lines. The objective of cooperation (as partners for steel) is to support customers in resolving the interface problems between the various technologies, integrating shotblasting, measuring, marking, drilling and sawing or punching and shearing or coping and profiling thereby offering customers added value and profit from the processing of steel.
Click here for information on cleanliness standards
Click here for information on surface profile
For further information on roller conveyor shot blast machines please click here
Post written by
Haydn Kitchen
Shot Blasting Technical Manager
Steel trading companies and fabricators shot blast their steel plate, sections and pipes to achieve a degree of surface cleanliness that is required before protective coatings are applied or other surface preparation needs.
Automated roller conveyor shot blast systems offer solutions which guarantee a highly-efficient descaling, rust /oxidisation removal and general surface cleaning of all kinds of steel.
Shot blasting is a process for the surface treatment of plate, pipes, beams, tubes and bars.
Due to the design, roller conveyor shot blast systems are ideally suited for this application as it allows fast and highly-effective cleaning and surface preparation and at the same time, provides the surface with a profile to which a coating will adhere well, accommodating a wide- range of commercial to marine offshore standards.
The equipment descales the surface of the steel ready to accept a first-class coating, or further engineering processes.
Equipment design and efficiency are paramount and should include the following as basic design and inclusions;
Generally, standard equipment concepts allow the processing of components from 1000mm wide, upto 5200mm wide and 600mm high. Other configurations may be offered as bespoke equipment and to accommodate more complexly designed fabrications.
Click here for information on cleanliness standards
Click here for information on surface profile
For further information on roller conveyor shot blast machines click here
Post written by
Haydn Kitchen
Shot Blasting Technical Manager
Fine-blanking can achieve flatness and cut edge characteristics that are unobtainable by conventional stamping and punching methods and surface finishing adds additional value.
Fine blanking is capable of combining several steps normally required by traditional stamping making this procedure a very time-efficient process. In a single step, fine blanking can produce a part which would normally require multiple operations in terms of man hours and equipment set-ups. Fine blanking is known and is a recognised method for creating component parts with fully sheared crisp clean edges, close tolerances and profile, eliminating in many cases, secondary requirements.
The production of fine blanks can be formed from various metal types of steel, non-ferrous including zinc, aluminum, aluminum alloys, copper and brass for the automotive industry and other industrial sectors.
Many companies keep the important operation of surface finishing in-house and utilise various systems such as rotary vibrators, centrifugal disk machines and waste water treatment systems. The size and shape of the parts as well as the surface finish requirements, determine which type of mass finishing system is required.
To be cost-effective, mass finishing operations for many and various fine blanked parts require the utilisation of different mass finishing technologies.
Shorter cycle times with centrifugal disk finishing
Centrifugal disk finishing systems are ideal for such applications. When it comes to intensive grinding and polishing, centrifugal disk machines are usually 10 – 30 times more productive. Their separation system guarantees batch integrity. However, these finishing systems are somewhat limited by the batch size. For example, a batch of relatively high quantity of parts weighing 400 kg require to be divided into several smaller batches.
Typically, for these larger production capacities, a fully automatic centrifugal disk finishing machine which processes the parts without any operator involvement all the way to depositing the finished parts into dedicated parts bins, is an ideal option. The effluent from this centrifugal disk machine can be cleaned with an effluent treatment process centrifuge after which the cleaned water and compound can be recirculated many times, to achieve considerable cost savings.
Alternatively, consideration could be given to a fully automated rotary system and possibly with several small centrifugal disk finishing machines. The effluent from all these finishing machines can be handled by a waste water centrifuge before being recycled. This allows running several surface finishing processes with optimum results and excellent cost control.
Do you know the difference between standard rotary vibro bowls and high speed processing?
For the processing of larger quantities of component parts a range of high-speed rotary vibrators is an available option, with superior grinding performance and with process economics in mind.
In high speed rotary vibrators, (already in use at numerous manufacturers of fine blanks, stampings, folded or bent, sawn, cold and hot forged component parts), batches of 400 kg can be processed irrespective of whether a batch consists of 10 or 45,000 parts. The performance of high speed rotary vibrators is up to 60% higher than that of standard rotary vibrators which contributes to a quick payback or amortisation.
Click image to watch an automated
centrifugal disk system in operation
Post written by
Sandra Banks
Personal Assistant / Digital Marketing
