We manufacture abrasive belts for a vast range of metal and wood finishing machines and at AFS we stock a wide range of the more popular abrasive belts ready for next day shipment. All our belts are made by Cibo to exacting ISO9002 exacting standards. With such a wide range of options, how do you select the correct belt for your particular grinding, finishing or polishing process? All our product pages are filtered to help you find the right belt and if you are still unsure then there are also the faq’s at the bottom of this page.
We supply a wide range of sanding belts for metals. The Cibo Ceramic belts are particularly suited to aggressive sanding & grinding.
Our two most popular zirconium oxide (zirconia) sanding belts would be HZ72 and TZ59 materials. both are available from 24 grit up to 120 grit.
Aluminium oxide sanding belts are now used much less commonly for metal sanding. The ceramics and zirconia grits normally give significantly improved belt life. Where aluminium oxide sanding belts are required we have a range of different materials we recommend
The most popular sanding belts for wood are made from our KP949 materials and are often supplied for both long pad sander sanding belt machines and for wide belt sander applications.
If you are looking for cloth sanding belts for wood then we would normally recommend the aluminium oxide abrasive cloth materials such as our TX52 which is the most popular cloth sanding belt for wide belt sanders.
Ceramic Abrasives – The toughest and most durable abrasive grit. Use it on hard metals and in high pressure grinding applications such as belt grinding of steels on both backstand grinders and powerfile belts
Zirconia Abrasives – Tougher than aluminium oxide grit zirconia has, for a long time, been the most common product used for metal grinding but the new Cibo Ceramics are becoming the first choice option
Aluminium Oxide Abrasives – The most common abrasive grit. Excellent for metal finishing applications and the best and first choice for wood sanding.
Silicon Cabide Abrasives – A much sharper and more friable abrasive. Silicon carbide grit cuts like a knife and is therefore excellent for use on lacquers and resin coatings where you need to cut back the surface.
We have a more detailed blog which explains the differences between the various abrasive grits. You can read this blog here
The million dollar question…
If you ultimately require a bright polished finish then at step 1 use the finest grit size capable of effectively removing the initial metal stock, this will save you time during the final polishing process.
If you are grinding only and finish doesn’t matter then go for the most aggressive and most powerful belt to improve lifetime and the speed of cut. e.g.
For backstand grinder belts (2000 x 75, 2000 x 100 etc) the grinding pressure will be higher so a good strong, preferably polyester backed cloth is ideal. For more detail sanding where you are working on the slack of the belt (such as is sometimes the case with a vertical linisher – belt sizes 1525 x 25, 1065 x 25) or powerfile belts then flexibility can be more important.
For a longer read we have prepared a blog article which gives some more detail on flexibility and coated abrasives.
