The polishing machine is a machine that has been specifically designed to use for polishing surfaces of numerous articles. Each polishing machine has it’s own individual characteristics dependant upon it’s intended use.. As well as there being machines of very simple design, there are also polishing machines with laps, wet blasting machines and centrifugal machines.
With a polishing machine that has laps the polishing is done by having a rotating lap attached and mounted on to a spindle on the machine. Here the item that requires polishing is secured, usually to a workbench of some shape or form, and the lap is moved over the surface of this item doing the polishing. The laps for these polishing machines tend to be made from soft metal, wood, felt or leather. When using the laps you can either bond the polishing and lapping materials to the laps themselves or you can wait and add the materials during the finishing process.
A wet blasting polishing machine is where an item that needs polishing is placed inside a chamber. The item is then blasted with jets of liquid that are saturated with an abrasive of some sort. The muzzle of this type of polishing machine will work its way slowly along the whole length of the item continually pushing out jets of the abrasive mixed liquid throughout the whole polishing process.
A centrifugal polishing machine is one that is used to polish items that are of a complex design. They have a container that is filled with an abrasive powder of some sort or suspension. Inside the chamber the item that needs to be polished is fixed and the container rotates. Whilst rotating the abrasive inside the container moves freely and polishes the item.
When it comes to wood work and the furniture industry and carpentry in particular there are 2 types of polishing machine that are used. One is for the polishing of the wood and the other for polishing the paints and varnishes used as coatings on the wood. For polishing the wood this polishing machine will have one or more pads attached to a working head which is rotated by a motor. The working head has a reciprocating motion making the pads move over the surface that requires polishing. The process is pretty much identical to hand polishing. For the polishing of paint and varnish coatings the polishing machine will have a soft rotating drum that is made out of cloth of some sort. These machines are good also for polishing edges and hard to get to places.