Stainless Steel Fillet Weld Polishing With GA Combi Discs

A customer asked us to improve the grinding & polishing of stainless steel fillet welds to leave a bright mirror polished finish.

GA Combi Discs Speed Up Stainless Tig Weld Polishing.

Supplying high end pharmaceutical applications, speeding up the process without reducing the quality of finish was essential. Our customer had tried using fillet weld grinding discs before but they were not convinced. The current process used a dynafile with a range of belts followed by polishing mops ( a 6 stage process). We introduced them to the new GA Combi Discs saving time & money.

New Process: Stage 1 – Unitised Combi Disc on the FinitEasy removed and pre-polished the fillet weld. Stage 2 – We polished the stainless steel with our felt disc and PV/102 polishing compound.

Machine: Cibo FinitEasy

Products: GA8 Combi Unitised (GA/8/T31)

Felt Disc (MHV5600/T31)

Polishing soap (PV/102)

Vienna Chalk (PV/103)

The GA Unitised Combi Disc Removes Weld Quickly & Neatly.

Total removal of the fillet welds and a consistent mirror polish finish for pharmaceutical application of their product was required. The finish of the product is paramount for maintaining smooth product flow and ensuring no entrapment. Achieving this through more conventional methods was time-consuming and inconsistent. The GA8 Unitised Discs removed the tig seam welds and prepared the workpiece for final finishing in one action. Our customer confirmed that the process was cleaner, was of excellent quality & the time to a finished mirror polish for each job was reduced by approximately 50 minutes.

Nobody Likes Using Dynafile Belts

The old process for fillet weld grinding was time consuming and sometimes ineffective. The first step used a 60 grit zirconia powerfile belt to remove the tig welds (a common complaint was that the powerfile belts struggled to dress out the welds effectively). A finer 120 grit zirconia belt followed to remove sanding lines left by the aggressive 60 grit belt. Step 3 was a medium surface conditioning powerfile belt for final grinding before polishing. Unfortunately, this method meant that they were always ‘chasing the finish’, creating fresh sanding lines as they attempted to remove the old ones. Polishing started with a stitched cotton mop to apply the first of three polishing compounds, the final two polishing compounds were both applied with a loose cotton mop.

The process was time consuming, irritating and inconsistent. We endeavoured to improve their procedure to the benefit of everyone in their team, the GA8 Unitised Combi Disc followed by a felt disc applying one polishing compound was the clear solution.

The GA Combi Discs Speed Up Stainless Fillet Weld Polishing.

By switching to the GA8 Unitised Combi Disc we replaced the current 6-step method with two simple steps. The GA8 Unitised Combi disc replaced 3 powerfile belt steps and the felt disc replaced 3 polishing steps. Entrapment of substance in the finished product was unacceptable for our customer and they worked very hard to achieve a high standard of finish. The streamlined efficiency of our new process was a definite win, our customer was delighted to have a new process which saves time, effort and money.