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Stainless Steel Abrasive Finish Standards

We are currently trying to improve a small stainless steel screw for one of our products. The engineer has determined that bead blasting the parts seems to be beneficial. However, we have been unable to determine/find information on specifying a finish designation for the blueprint if there is a standard. The tolerancing for the part run from ±.005 to ±.0005, so specifying a standard would seem to be very important. There was a reference in another letter (#12066) referring to publication 9012 "Finishes for Stainless Steel" at the Nickel Development Institute. If that publication works for this question, it no longer seems to exist. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Steve Gehlhausen
QA in manufacturing - Walla Walla, Washington, USA
2003

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This does not answer your question; however, I thought you might like to think of a cheaper alternative to bead blasting. If you have a lot of volume or your screws are small, under a 1/2". You might want to consider tumbling or mass finishing your parts just part on part.

AF Kenton
retired business owner - Hatboro, Pennsylvania
2003