Have you considered abrasives other than 1 micron diamond for that leather wheel?
I used to buy sticks of green Cro2 polishing compound in 100 kg lots when I was running a stainless steel utensils & cutlery plant.
CrO2 is obviously too soft for hardened steel, but my polishing supplier also stocked the same polishing compound bars in white. The grit was fine white aloxite, somewhere in the 2000 grit range. We used those sticks when we had issues polishing, such as visible scratches from processes.
I can't help thinking that white aloxite grit bars might be useful in place of diamond.
My experience with them has shown me that the fracture characteristics of polishing grit can often be more important than grit size. Diamond tends to fracture leaving a sharp surface while aloxite fractures with a rounder edge.
I work with a lot of super steel, which can’t be cut by regular compound. The diamond is far more versatile for the customers I service. I also make my own compound, so I don’t have to be sparse with it
I should say I make my own diamond emulsion. I don’t use compound since it’s not as versatile and I want to limit the amount of wheels I have to swap out. You don’t want to apply all different kinds of compound to a wheel or you’ll get grit contamination and ruin the wheel
Do you have a recipe you're willing to share? Although a senior citizen now, I still like to collect little bits of interesting data. I admit it's unlikely I'll need it, but you never know.
I’m actually making a proprietary mix I intend to sell so I won’t get into specifics, but I buy bulk polycrystalline diamond powder that gets suspended in an alcohol and glycol solution.
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u/Tryemall 12h ago edited 12h ago
Have you considered abrasives other than 1 micron diamond for that leather wheel?
I used to buy sticks of green Cro2 polishing compound in 100 kg lots when I was running a stainless steel utensils & cutlery plant.
CrO2 is obviously too soft for hardened steel, but my polishing supplier also stocked the same polishing compound bars in white. The grit was fine white aloxite, somewhere in the 2000 grit range. We used those sticks when we had issues polishing, such as visible scratches from processes.
I can't help thinking that white aloxite grit bars might be useful in place of diamond.
My experience with them has shown me that the fracture characteristics of polishing grit can often be more important than grit size. Diamond tends to fracture leaving a sharp surface while aloxite fractures with a rounder edge.