Why Finish Parts
When parts get waterjet, there seem to be a ‘film’ of some sort left on the surface, it might just be dust from the abrasive in the water that gets on the parts when removing. We have tested and can spot-weld just fine through the 'film', but it would be great to have a cleaner surface.
This, as well as the inherent burrs on waterjet parts, made me interested to figure out any existing waterjet finishing processes.
Finishes Used in Industry
This link explains a few of the finishes in use at Big Blue Saw: https://www.bigbluesaw.com/saw/faqs/parts/what-types-of-finishing-are-offered-with-waterjet-cutting.html
The ‘Pad Prep’ finish seems to be what we want to remove the surface ‘film’ and knock down some of the burrs:
This page seems to be previously posted on the Big Blue Saw site, and has the details of the “Basic Finish” mentioned in the image above:
https://planiverse.wordpress.com/2014/04/28/finishing-waterjet-cut-parts/
Required Parts
So it seems we need a non-woven abrasive pad to perform the finishing and hopefully remove the ‘film’ on the surface (or the ‘frosting’ as the article above mentioned - here’s a few waterjet pages that mention frosting - https://wardjet.com/news/waterjet-water-level-control, https://www.omax.com/news/blog/5-tank-tips-better-abrasive-waterjet-cutting).
But what is a non-woven abrasive pad?
https://www.nortonabrasives.com/en-us/resources/expertise/how-choose-and-use-non-woven-abrasives
Seems like they are just the regular type of coarse kitchen sponge. So we’ll do some testing with one of those and see how well it works.
A couple local options to get the finishing pads:
This one is likely the best option: https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/mastercraft-surface-prep-discs-kit-2-in-0547501p.html#srp
https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/maximum-strip-it-abrasive-flex-disc-4-1-2-in-0541823p.html#srp