VIDEO: Stainless Steel Grinding Test with 3M Abrasive Belts

Hi I'm TJ with 3M Abrasives.  Today we're going to test a couple different belts grinding on stainless steel to see  which belt grinds faster and will save  you time. This one is a general-purpose alumina zirconia or AZ belt. It's a good choice for a variety of different metals. And this one is our 3M Cubitron II Cloth Belt 784 F. It features a 3M  precision-shaped grain and a grinding aid to reduce heat. Both belts are 60  grit and we're gonna have the backstand machine running at 1900 RPM which will calculate out to 7000 surface feet per minute which is optimum for grinding on stainless steel.

Before we start grinding, let's make sure we put on our safety  gear. First, want to have our eye  protection, then our hearing protection, a good pair of safety gloves and a 3M safety respirator. Now let's go to the backstand and start grinding.

I'm starting  with the general purpose AZ belt. I'll  grind a series of four stainless steel bars for one minute a piece. I want to see how much material is removed over the series.  [Music] During one minute of grinding, the  general-purpose AZ belt removed 80 grams of material from the first bar, 44 grams  from the second bar, 43 grams from the third bar, and 52 grams from the fourth bar. That's a total of 219 grams.

Now I've swapped out the AZ belt for the 3M Cubitron II Cloth Belt 784 F and grabbed a fresh set of four stainless steel bars.  Let's see how much material this belt removes.  [Music]  The Cubitron II 784 F belt removed 117  grams from the first stainless steel bar,  85 grams from the second, 83 grams from  the third, and 86 grams from the fourth bar. That's a total of 371 grams with a Cubitron II  belt compared to 219 grams with an AZ belt, plus the cut rate after four minutes of grinding was higher than the fresh AZ belt.

You can see the heat stress on the bars that were ground with the AZ belt. Thanks to the grinding aid in the Cubitron II belt, it stayed much cooler and didn’t  burn the metal when grinding. That will help reduce the amount of time you spend in the finishing steps. Whether you're working  on a stainless steel, aluminum or any other metal, there's an ideal 3M  belt to help you be more productive because as you just saw, using the right belt can make a big difference.  Thanks for watching.