Burnishing Media Balls, Cones, Pins, Diagonals, and More
Burnishing Media Services
At STR Industries, we specialize in producing steel metal parts for a variety of industrial and commercial needs. With over 50 years of experience, and over 500 million pieces of stainless-steel media produced, we understand how to create high-quality products to serve virtually any need. For every assignment, we satisfy tolerance requirements, budgetary restrictions, and timeline limitations to offer the overall best product quality and service. Our streamlined manufacturing operation enables us to reduce costs for customers around the world, and we can do the same for you.
One of our most in-demand services include burnishing and deburring mechanical parts and metal products. The following guide explains what these services entail and how they’re used.
What Is Ball Burnishing?
Burnishing is the process of smoothing and hardening a metal to ensure maximum usability and durability. It produces a shiny, mirror-like finish on metal surfaces that is resistant to corrosion, wear, and breakage.
To burnish a piece of metal, a technician first places it into a spinning horizontal barrel and then a vibratory tub filled with abrasive burnishing media. These parts gently vibrate against the piece, polishing and smoothing it to perfection. If the object has any micro-inconsistencies, the weight of the surrounding media scours these flaws away. After the plating process, the technician removes the metal ball from the burnishing machine and uses a separate device to finish and spin the product dry.
Once the process is complete, the metal will have a mirror-like luster and be harder and stronger than before.
Burnishing Benefits
Burnishing offers several additional benefits, including:
- Cost-effectiveness, as the material will last longer, which reduces the need for repairs or replacement
- Enhanced smoothness and hardness
- High degree of dimensional control
- Increased resistance to corrosion, cracks, and breakage
- Visual perfection and an aesthetically pleasing, smooth finish
- Compatible parts that fit seamlessly into machinery, eliminating the need for other applications or processes
Burnishing Media From STR Industries
STR Industries uses our own burnishing media to polish and finish metal parts. We create burnishing media using stainless steel media and carbon media, as these high-density materials are hard enough to polish and smooth most metal alloys.
We can also tailor our burnishing media to suit any size product and engineering tolerance. We understand how important it is to manufacture metal parts that perfectly suit your industrial machinery, which is why we customize our burnishing service to include a variety of burnishing shapes and sizes.
Media Shapes
We polish metal pieces using a variety of media shapes, including:
- Balls
- Ball cones
- Cones
- Pines
- Diagonals
These shapes create distinct polishing effects that allow us to achieve different finishes and reach every crevice.
Media Piece Sizes
Our media pieces also come in a range of sizes between 1/8″ and 1″.
- Smaller media pieces create an attractive, flawless finish, and deliver the most accuracy because it has more points of contact with the object that’s being polished.
- Larger media pieces, on the other hand, work best to deburr metal parts with large inconsistencies and sharp edges.
Industrial Applications
Our burnishing and deburring services are practical for a broad range of applications—here are just a few common examples:
- Zinc die-castings
- Mint burnishing
- Creating a mirror finish for cutlery or jewelry
- Manufacturing and industrial parts
Contact STR for Your Burnishing Media Needs
STR Industries offers competitive pricing and excellent customer service, in addition to reliable and high-quality burnishing and metal finishing treatments. We thoroughly inspect every item before shipping and complete assignments on schedule. No project is too large or small for us to handle, and we ship worldwide. To learn more about our burnishing process and capabilities, contact us or request a quote today.