Task Three

Task Three was to polish my Ni Sample. Since Prajkta and I did not have the time to polish the sample on Tuesday, I came in on Thursday to do so. In order to polish my sample, I had to travel from my lab room in the basement of the LPL to the fifth floor lab. There they had a machine called the Vibratory Polisher.

In order to set the Vibratory Polisher up, we had to unscrew the top. After doing so, we are able to take out the lavender colored material. We first washed it in distilled water. Then we poured some Silicon based solvent on the material. We used silicon, however, there are different solvents for different levels of coarseness. Generally we start with a solvent that reduces the coarseness of the material we are polishing to 9 microns. Then we work our way down to 1 micron, then .5 microns, and finally, using the silicon solvent I used on Thursday, to .05 microns. We then replaced the top with the solvent-soaked-material now in between the top and the machine.

Usually with polishing materials, the material will fit within a holder that applies a force onto the sample while it is on the polisher. For a sample Prajkta was polishing on Thursday, she used the circular holder of 1 inch diameter.

There are other holders such as these:

However my Ni Sample was too small to fit in any of the holders. Now, unfortunately, I am unable to load videos into the blog, so I am unable to show the video I took of the Vibratory Polisher working. The way the Polisher works is that it vibrates in such a way that the holder can move in a circular pattern on the lavender material soaked in whatever solvent desired. The material wished to be polished will be placed on the holders. The holders are then placed onto the Vibratory Polisher. The holders do not hold the sample in place, but more so are there to apply pressure onto the sample, pushing it into the solvent-soaked-material. In the case of my Ni sample which was too small for a holder, I had to manually follow the sample with my finger, pressing it down to apply the pressure.

Now, this process generally takes around 2 hours, however, my sample only took around 20 minutes. After polishing on the Vibratory Polisher, I took my sample off the machine and placed it into a beaker of distilled water, which I placed into another machine called the Ultrasonik. This machine was filled with sink water and was then turned on for 5 minutes.

This machine vibrates and shakes the sample loose of any scraps left on the sample itself. After the 5 minutes were over, I rinsed the Ni with some distilled water and it was finished.

After learning how to use the polisher, I have been tasked for next week to prepare some samples for a workshop at the LPL later in April. This time I will be polishing some more metal samples, but hopefully some glass and ceramic samples as well. We will just have to wait and see next week!