Polishing stainless steel

[jmsrbrt]

First off, let me say I don't know much about "grades" of stainless, but having purchased some recently for some things I'm cutting, how do you get a nice shine, on a piece that is otherwise NOT shiny? I tried using a wire wheel...nice effect, but basically scratches. I wnat to shine it up a little to look like a mirror, or as close as I can come.

[admin]

You need a buffing wheel and the corect polishing compount to polish that to a mirror finish but it's not hard to do.

A previous business of mine was manufacturing stainless steel performance exhaust components and I built a large 5hp polishing machine with 17" buffing wheels on it.

You could get similar or the same results with a bench grinder and a couple buffing wheels stacked on the spindle and a brick of compound. The larger the wheel and the more power you have the faster you will accomplish your mirror finish, the bench grinder will just take you a little longer.

You could polish and metal with this setup. It's a dirty job but polished stuff is cool.

admin

[jeeplogic83]

The other thing you can use is a flapper sanding disk for a high speed grinder. The finer the grit the better. Yes is does technically scratch it but if you take your time it looks really nice. You can even put little details in it. another way that looks cool is sand blasting but finger prints become a problem.

[admin]

Yes, the sandblast idea is cool. I used to cut out stencils with my plasma table then cover my stainless with it and sandblast logos and designs into the stainless. A cool trick but really I did it cause I couldn't afford to laser etch logos into the parts.

admin

[plasmajoe]

This is where I get all my buffing and polishing equipment. I polish all metals and alloys with their products. Hope this helps out.
http://www.caswellplating.com/buffs/index.html
Plasma Joe