3D Printed Titanium Polishing
Additive manufacturing or more commonly, 3D printing, provides a significant challenge for surface finishing. These challenges revolve around the unlimited design of the parts and the potential complexity of the geometric shapes as well as the roughness of the finish from the printing process itself.
As you can see, the titanium part on the left has a very rough surface finish as well as excess material on the bottom of the part. This all needs to be removed and then the surface polished in order to get to the finish on the right.
The part was tumbled in two-step process. The first step was needed to get a smooth surface finish and remove any excess titanium metal. Ceramic Media in a wet tumbling process for 5+ hours got the finish to a relatively smooth, matte surface finish. An Angle Cut Triangle shape was used to get into the corners and clean the edges of this part.
The second step was dry tumbling with our Pegco™ HC-4 Fine Premium Treated Tumbling Media. This media has polishing agents and lubricants built into the formulation to get clean, bright finishes. This process will do little to remove any metal but simply take the existing finish and burnish it.
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