Motorsport Fabrication Fundamentals: Linishing and Metal Polishing
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Linishing and Metal Polishing
03.07
| 00:00 | - One of the more common tasks we'll complete in motorsport fabrication involves shaping and preparing the materials that we're using. |
| 00:07 | Preparing material usually means cleaning it down, cutting it to length, bending the sections that we need and then fitting them into our given location. |
| 00:14 | This process involves removing material, checking the fit and then removing more material until the fit up is just right and this is easiest to achieve using a linisher. |
| 00:24 | These machines operate by rotating an abrasive finishing belt at high RPM which can then be used to remove material from your work piece. |
| 00:33 | The linishing belts are available in a wide range of grit levels from extremely coarse at 40 grit, designed for removing material extremely quickly, to 400 grit which is designed for finer material finishing. |
| 00:45 | Having a linisher with a wide variety of linishing belts available makes this a very versatile machine. |
| 00:51 | Linishers are designed for a number of different metal finishing operations. |
| 00:55 | In general, the drive wheel will spin the linishing belt and the rubber idler wheel mounted to the front of the adjustable length bar will tension the belt as well as acting as a dampened work area for you to apply pressure against. |
| 01:08 | This idler wheel diameter can be varied for tube notching duties. |
| 01:11 | Although not designed to complete the entire notch, it's a great way to perfect your fit up as well as deburring the notched tube. |
| 01:19 | Most linishers also include a horizontal flat working area where you can flatten flanges and square off faces with ease. |
| 01:27 | Some combination linishers also offer a horizontal sanding disc on the side of the machine which is handy for deburring small items but it's definitely not essential. |
| 01:35 | Using a linisher must be done with care and when removing material from objects on the horizontal section of the belt, we need to make sure we're standing to the side of the belt. |
| 01:46 | This prevents a part from hitting you, should it grab on the finishing belt or you lose your grip on the object. |
| 01:51 | While larger linishers will be permanently bolted to the floor or bench mounted, this doesn't have to be the case. |
| 01:57 | Linishers are available in smaller hand held varieties that allow us to finish tube and refind our fitment. |
| 02:04 | These hand held linishers or belt sanders as they're also known, offer a quick and easy way to finish our work piece with that uniform finish that only a linisher can achieve. |
| 02:14 | Like the large floor or bench mounted linishers, the smaller hand held examples offer a wide range of different belt dimensions and grit levels. |
| 02:22 | Specific hand held linishers can offer options for tube polishing and finishing by partially wrapping the sanding belt around the tube. |
| 02:29 | This process is often used in chromoly chassis fabrication where we want to remove the darkened outer crust of the tube to improve the purity of the TIG weld. |
| 02:39 | If you're going to be working with aluminium as well as ferrous materials and particularly if you intend to weld the material once you've finished linishing it, it's advisable to have a separate belt that's used only for linishing alloy. |
| 02:51 | Much like the abrasive discs we learned about in the angle grinder module, using the same belt on ferrous and non ferrous material can contaminate your work piece, making it difficult or impossible to achieve a quality weld. |
