Buffing Equipment

Buffing Equipment

Buffing Equipment - The buffing machine (usually called a buffing lathe) resembles an off hand grinding machine. It has usually two arbors which are of 32 to 50 mm diameter. Two flanges are mounted on the arbor to hold 75 to 150 mm thick buffing wheels (like grinding wheels on the off hand grinding machine).

Buffing wheels are made of cloth (cotton, wool. flannel or muslin) or fibre firmly sewed together in 6 to 13 mm thick sections. These sections are closely pressed together by the flanges on the buffing machine arbor. Buffing wheels or buffs are usually 300 to 750 mm in diameter and rotate at 1000 to 3000 RPM.

The buffing wheel is charged by pressing the abrasive stick against the (cloth) wheel periphery until the wheel is thoroughly coated.

The abrasive stick is made up with a heavy grease or wax base. The so called abrasives which have almost no cutting ability are red rouge (ferric oxide) or green rouge (chromium oxide) for soft metals, aluminium oxide for hard metals, etc.