VIDEO: Grinding and Blending a Weld with 3M Abrasives

Hi there, TJ deep in the cam center again. We're gonna talk about flap discs and we're gonna do a two-step process with some 60 grit flap discs and our like running and blending heavy-duty Scotch Brite discs.

First off, let's talk about the flap discs. We have two different styles here as you can see. We have a Type 29 and a Type 27. If we kind of lay them down here, the Type 27 is flat on a part and we got a Type 29 with a tilt and a lot of people are asking we get a lot of questions as to why. A couple different reasons. The Type 27 does lay flat so then you tilt it about 20 degrees it will grind with a little bit more force and you're good and about only about half of the flaps are actually touching the weld

With the Type 29 you have the full coverage. When it's deep on that weld it's going to grind on there and you're gonna get full coverage. That whole one inch by half inch of the flaps are gonna touch the surface. It's gonna give you a little bit nicer finish but that's why people liked the flap discs in the first place. They are user friendly, they're not as aggressive as a fiber disc so if you have new operators out there maybe sometimes you want to give them a flap disc instead of a fiber disc so it doesn't ruin your parts.

What you have here is some thinner gauge steel, carbon steel, so if you had a fiber disc sometimes you'd be given a 36 grit that will go through this pretty quickly and could ruin your parts. We're gonna take it away with a 60 grit because this weld it looks beefy but it's not really that big so we're gonna take down with a 60 grit so that scratch pattern on the steel is gonna be nice enough that we're going to remove it with the light grinding and blending Scotch Brite heavy-duty disc on a purple. And then you're gonna get to about a two, two-and-a-half mil paint thickness that you can apply on your parts so let's give this a try.

So as you can see there it does take a little bit longer to take those welds down but you're not going to ruin the part so if you have inexperienced operators that you're not really trusting them with your parts and you're getting a lot of rejects, the flap disc lays a really, really nice scratch pattern and they'd have to dwell on that part for a long time to try to ruin it. So the flap disc is pretty user-friendly. It does have again it has the precision shaped grain so it does cut quicker than some of the other flap discs.

This is the 969F so it's a wide weight backing on this flap disc so let's kind of take this off and let's go to our second step because you're going to want to get down to paint. So this LGB light running and blending heavy-duty disc has a TN nut on there so let's put the face plate or any you can have any type of backup pad on there. We're just trying to blend the surface so we don't need any other base plate that's not going to cut like a fiber disc.

So let's kind of go instead of north and south we're going to make sure we get rid of some of these lines we're going to go east and west on these lines here. So as you can tell this light grinding and blending disc does take off the scratches pretty well.  It'll take off the rust and any heat that was discolored on this surface. Now you're ready to paint about two-and-a-half mils, two mils of paint depending on how deep those past scratches and let me know how this two-step process works for you.  Try this light grinding and blending disc and again. I'd love to see your comments. Let's see some sparks and hopefully you can get your parts out quicker. Thanks for coming.