Cleaning up stainless and aluminum cut edges

[motoguy]

I'd like to start working more with stainless and aluminum. However...those edges! What are your tricks for cleaning up the rough edges on aluminum, and the rough/blackened edges on stainless? Flap wheel on large flat areas, die grinder, small wheel, and go to town on small or interior cuts?

[sphurley]

I spray mig shield on both sides of the stainless before I cut. It helps but not perfect. Since my parts are not display pieces, we flap the sides and then into the vibrator for a uniform flat finish and burr free.

[plain ol Bill]

I'm sure you know this already but DO NOT use wire wheels, flappers or grinding disc's that have been used on carbon steel on stainless unless you want rust spots.

[SeanP]

What I do is try to avoid those jobs, especially if a decent finish is needed, it's bad enough on straight edges, text & cutouts takes a lot of time.
I cleaned up some small parts yesterday using a adapter for the grinder to use those small 2'' discs, they worked well, used die grinder with small bits for internals, but a slow job.

[muzza]

I have a Rosco to clean up our stainless stuff, aluminium comes up pretty good straight off the table, just some small bits of dross on the back where the slats are which mostly come off when the job is pressure cleaned.

Oh, what's a Rosco you ask. Well Rosco is one of the guys in the shop who loves sitting there with stainless and Roloc discs on the mini grinder, a die grinder and emery paper to clean up all the inside cuts. He does a pretty good job of it too but if anyone wants full polish I send them to a metal polisher nearby.
Murray

[RAD]

Cut some oval flanges recently, close up on the edges of the wastage. I think these came out better than I expected.

This was customer supplied material so not sure if this was 304 or 316. What grade were you guys cutting that had rough blackened edges?

[KIDTech]

Build ya a parts tumbler or get yourself a concrete mixer, either way is a good way of going about it. Then get ahold of me as I have 50-60 tons of ceramic for your media that works great on SS.

[motoguy]

I bought a concrete mixer just for tumbling. Worked great on steel parts. Can I just rinse it out, or do I need a tumbler just for stainless work?

[Gamelord]

Never had a tumbler work that well on Stainless...but mine was quite small. Steel was no problem but stainless just seemed to roll around a bit and have zero effect. Tried several different media as well.

Would like more info on this though, cleaning stainless does take a while, especially raw stainless with lots of mill scale on it.

[KIDTech]

I worked on a project implementing RTO's (Regenerative Thermal Oxidizers) and they use a ceramic saddle for the media bed. We ordered too much and I got to keep the leftover which turn out to work great for SS tumbling but I do not rinse it out when changing metals....

[flimmy]

Build ya a parts tumbler or get yourself a concrete mixer, either way is a good way of going about it. Then get ahold of me as I have 50-60 tons of ceramic for your media that works great on SS.

Where do you live ? I'd take some if you are close. I already have the concrete mixer for a tumbler just havent used it yet

[KIDTech]

Indiana

[Shardha579]

Quite an interesting post.

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