Announcing the latest technology in electropolishing that enables Steel Studio to deliver quality stainless steel balustrades in shorter delivery times at more affordable prices.
In today’s competitive market place, the stainless steel balustrade manufacturing industry must take advantage of as many manufacturing and skill improvements, including innovative, cost-saving techniques that are available to them to stay ahead to deliver a quality product, on time and at affordable prices.
Electro-polishing isn’t new to the industry, but an electro-polishing machine designed explicitly for focused cleaning of tig-welding marks in tight spaces on stainless steel has transformed the manufacturing process and is delivering more significant results in quality and delivery time.
We have taken advantage of this technology to deliver even better quality products to our clients in shorter delivery times at more affordable rates.
What is electropolishing?
Electropolishing is a process also known as an electrochemical process, that removes unwanted material like welding residue from a metallic surface. In simple terms, it polishes or cleans metal. It can be used instead of manual micro polishing with abrasives, to save on expensive labour costs.
Traditionally, a steel component is immersed in a bath of electrolyte or electrochemical liquid solution that often consists of sulfuric acid and phosphoric acid. The solution needs to have a high viscosity. A positive terminal of a power supply connects to the bath, and the negative terminal connects to the cathode. Then, a current passes through the bath, where the surface of the metal is oxidized, producing hydrogen. A reduction reaction occurs on the rough, unwanted surface of the steel component. The rough surface on the steel component dissolves in a process termed anodic leveling. This process is successful only under constant monitoring of the liquid temperature and stable current.
Electropolishing is beneficial for stainless steel because the electropolishing passivates the stainless steel by removing iron from the steel surface and enhances the chromium/nickel content that increases stainless steel’s corrosion resistance. After electropolishing stainless steel, you are left with a smooth surface that is easy to keep clean and sterilized.
Steel objects with intricate shapes and areas that are difficult to reach with other polishing methods are cleaned and polished easily with electropolishing.
How is Steel Studio using the latest technology in electropolishing to improve their stainless steel balustrades?
The original concept of electropolishing has been re-formulated and put into a handheld tool that performs the same function as the bath with electrolyte in with a positive and negative current. During the manufacturing process of stainless steel balustrades, tig welding is the welding process used on stainless steel. The black marks caused by the welding needs to be cleaned off and can be a time-consuming and costly exercise to manually clean with wire brush and scotch brush including the cost of expensive labour.
Now we are using a hand-held electro-polishing machine to remove the black marks from the welded areas on the stainless steel balustrade components. This technique helps us improve the quality of the stainless steel and the end product. With this method, we don’t affect the brushing direction of the material. If you polish the stainless steel component manually, however, you are continually having to ensure that the brush direction of the steel isn’t being affected negatively.
The brush of the electropolishing machine gets dipped into an electrolyte with high viscosity. With the same principles as in the electropolishing bath method, the brush is applied to the welded areas on the stainless steel in gentle backward and forwards motion, keeping your brush wet with the cleaning chemical at all times. A current flows through the brush during the time of application. This process is straightforward and extremely fast. At the same time, consumable usage and labour costs reduce including improved product quality with this technology. On completion, a neutralizing liquid gets applied to a soft wiping cloth, and the leftover liquid gets wiped off, exposing the clean welds, without any black marks from the welding.
This latest innovative handheld electropolishing technology is the type of technology Steel Studio uses to improve the quality of our stainless steel balustrade products, including improved service delivery and as a result, customer satisfaction.
By continually improving our skills and technologies, we can guarantee our quality and above all the safety of our products.
For tested stainless steel balustrade design ideas visit our web page https://www.steelstudio.co.za/stainless-steel-balustrades/
If you’d like a no-obligation quote, call us today on +27 011 608 1963 or email sales@steelstudio.co.za to talk to one of our qualified sales executives.