Mass finishing by the Vibra Finish team results in high-quality metal parts

Vibra Finish recommends mass finishing for efficiency.

Vibra Finish helps manufacturers remove jagged edges from products, and clean and polish them, to make them suitable for market. An efficient way to accomplish this is a mass finishing process. This involves finishing several parts together, typically in a finishing, tumbling, vibratory, or centrifugal machine.

With mass finishing, the Vibra Finish team smooths edges, polishes surfaces, and cleans nooks on metal parts to achieve high quality.

A unique scrubbing action

The mass finishing process involves a unique scrubbing action between parts and finishing media. After the user feeds parts into a machine with media, finishing compounds, and water, the parts and media scrub against each other and the compounds help remove debris and prevent it from redepositing. Compounds can be wet or dry, and their composition varies based on the required action; this determines their abrasive action and alkalinity.

There are many kinds of finishing media from which to choose, and Vibra Finish offers a variety. Examples include synthetic preformed plastic media, ceramic media, and natural media such as walnut-shell media. The walnut-shell kind is made out of treated and crushed walnuts, which are biodegradable and environmentally friendly. An effective cleaner and polisher, walnut-shell media are recommended for tumbling machines and for finishing parts made of brass, aluminum, bronze, or other soft metals.

Another advantage of using walnut-shell media in mass finishing is their strength in deburring, due to the shells’ hardness, fibre, and angular and multifaceted shape. These media last long and can be reused repeatedly; they also help to reduce cycle times in tumbling and vibrating systems, and they suit delicate surfaces because they have no rough abrasive action.

The mass finishing process can work as a batch process, a continuous one, or a series of steps. The batch way involves loading parts in several different batches one after the other, while continuous mass finishing has loading and unloading occurring constantly during the finishing process. In the third method, parts go through a sequence of processes; each step results in some degree of finishing, until they are complete in the end.

To learn more, contact Vibra Finish.

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