How to choose your polishing materials?
Polishing is the action of remove surface for the shortest time, while ensuring a high level of surface finish, fitting the application.
The polished substrate is the material on the surface of the device to be polished. Each substrate has its own intrinsic hardness, often measured on the Mohs scale (0 to 10).
The polishing process always implies a compromise between polishing speed (Removal Rate – RR) and surface finish. This will depend on the nature of the substrate to polish and especially its intrinsic hardness, and the polishing technique used.
Baikowski’s Alumina, Silica, Ceria and Diamond solutions polish substrates such as:
- Ceramic. We can polish various ceramic substrates such as spinel pieces.
- Crystal. For example, the sapphire: we can adapt the products according to the crystallographic face to polish. This substrate can be found in watchmaking (watch tops before and after polishing in the opposite illustration) and semiconductor industries. Learn more on our SPH slurry performance for sapphire polishing.
- Glass. High performance glass parts can be polished with ceria-based slurries.
- Metal. Fine pieces for watchmaking, low thickness, requiring highly fine surface finish.
- Organic Glass. This category includes intraocular lenses, which can be polished by an alumina-based formulation.
- Varnish & lacquer. Car polish is a well-known application, which requires pastes-type formulations, or at least high-viscosity products.
Discover our selection guide that will help you find the best solution for your substrates in our dedicated white paper.
Download our Polishing White Paper
Customized Polishing Solutions
Baikowski® Group offers customized polishing solutions tailored to your specific substrate and process, including powders, slurries, pastes, and custom formulations. For alumina powders far example, we optimize agglomeration for maximum efficiency, offering a range of options: spray-dried products, blends of fine alpha and gamma alumina particles, agglomerated alpha particles, and isolated alpha particles.
We precisely control particle size and distribution to achieve your desired surface finish and we can also adjust the alpha alumina content within a gamma alumina matrix. Our blog post, “the Superior Finishing Polishing Performance with Fine Alumina with high specific area vs. Colloidal Silica for soft metals in Metallography” demonstrates how fine alumina with high specific area improves surface finish, reduces polishing time, and simplifies cleaning.
For custom formulations, we fine-tune parameters like viscosity to complement abrasive performance. Our polishing materials are designed for versatile implementation across various media, and we optimize our abrasives to meet your specific application needs.
Additionally, our Charlotte facility in the US supports material processing and performance evaluations of traditional mechanical polishing with a dedicated applications lab equipped with lapping and polishing machines.