Polishing with garnet blast abrasive

Garnet Characteristics

Garnet is in actuality a kind or type of ruby, the title “garnet” evolved through the Latin term “granatus”, since it is the crystal in the rock that looks like pomegranate seed. The fracture surface area presents a shell-like shape and an oil luster that usually presents as opaque.

Garnet has the following abrasive characteristics: moderate hardness (6.5~8.0 Mosh), high melting point (1170~1280℃) and good chemical stability. It has a density of 3.5~4.3g/cm, ans a refractive index of 1.714~1.887. There are also a multitude of colors, like amaranthine, blood red, dark red, brown red, yellow,green, bright green, black depending on its different chemical contents. Varieties of garnet include almandine, pyrope, magnesium-iron garnet, manganese-alumina garnet, andradite and calcium-chromium garnet. Almandine has the highest hardness and good chemical stability.

Garnet by nature is a natural abrasive making it a good choice when used to replace sandblasting sand. Garnet can also be mixed with high pressure water to be used for cutting steel and other materials in water jet cutting.

Garnet can be divided into three main categories: garnet abrasive blasting, garnet abrasive water jet and garnet wear-resistant aggregate.

Sand polishing materials with garnet

Polishing materials is one of the most common uses for garnet blast abrasives. It is often used in industries that are closely related to production, such as shipbuilding, automobiles, pipelines, drilling platforms and other areas. Garnet blasting abrasives can easily reach the most stringent military and industrial sandblasting requirements. A good factor for garnet is that it can be relatively harmless to workers and the environment when used properly, and garnet can be used at an affordable price for many projects. Therefore, it can easily replace other traditional blasting abrasives.

At present certain sandblasting abrasives do pose certain problems like harmful substances, high prices, poor recyclability and other issues. Older blast abrasives such as copper slag, quartz sand, brown fused alumina and white fused alumina can pose severe health risks and do not meet today’s quality and safety standards. While garnet abrasives do not contain harmful substances, and generally do not produce a large amount of dust they can still achieve an excellent blasting effect. Not only can it achieve the effect of other abrasive blasting, but also it can achieve the highest SA3 and SA2.5 blasting grade. An important factor to consider when choosing your blast abrasive is price. Garnet is an all natural abrasive making it decently affordable when compared to other blast abrasives.

In addition to the sand blasting industry, the polishing/grinding industry heavily uses blast abrasives such as garnet and superoxalloy abrasives from 10X Engineered Materials for their projects. As for garnet powder, it is mainly used in a number of high precision industries, such as mobile phone screen polishing, gold, jewelry and jade polishing. There are many other applications that we see uses for garnet abrasives such as: sandpapers, sanding blocks, abrasive filler etc… While the industry keeps developing we continue to see garnet and  superoxalloy abrasives having application in more fields.

The right abrasive for polishing 

You have a lot of choices when it comes to choosing the right blast abrasive for polishing materials, so when choosing the right blast abrasive for your project it is important to remember the cost effectiveness and reusability of the superoxalloy abrasives from 10X Engineered Materials. The KinetiX and EpiX abrasives are an excellent choice for blast media for use in your next polishing project. The KinetiX EpiX abrasives can be purchased directly on the 10X Engineered Materials website or from our distributors nationwide.

Currently, KinetiX and EpiX are available from abrasive distributors around the US. If you don’t see a distributor near you, contact 10X and we will work with you to get you what you need. EpiX abrasive, which is best for precision applications such as powder coating and medical applications, is also available to purchase directly from the 10X Engineered Materials website.