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world gathers for metal finishing
Q&As since 1989


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Looking for Material to Use for De-burring Nickel Plated Engraved Cylinder

What would take the burrs off a nickel plated engraved cylinder and not damage the cells of the cylinder or the nickel plating. We find that newly engraved cylinders sometimes come back from the vendor with a surface that causes us to wear through doctor blades at an alarming rate before we can go into normal production. Although our vendor has been told that we need a well polished surface, we do run into this problem more often then we would like. Does anyone have a solution other then changing vendors or has anyone run into the same type of problem?

Richard Hovasse
- Winchester, Massachusetts
2004

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What kind of blades are you using? It seems as if they were very soft or the nickel very rough. I am familiar with chrome plated engraved cylinders and the normal practice is to polish the surface with very fine emery paper (1000 or finer) after plating and before putting them into service. This leaves a flat surface and eliminates microroughness and nodules w/o distorting the fine details.

Guillermo Marrufo
Monterrey, NL, Mexico
2004

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In addition to enhancing the finish of your nickel surface, you may want to consider improving the wear characteristics of your doctor blade. Depending on the type of metal, a technology for you to consider is cryogenic treatment. This process has proven to greatly increase the wear resistance of many steels by modifying the carbon structure within the base metal. The treatment is a permanent, through metal modification that does not wear off like coatings. That means that the benefits last after resharpening or refinishing. Users typically report a doubling (or more) of service life. There are a variety of specialty shops that offer this treatment, which is known as "deep cryogenic treatment" or "cryogenic tempering". I think that it is something that you should consider.

Robin Rhodes
Worcester, Massachusetts
2004