Process for Cleaning and Polishing Nitinol or Titanium

Minimum recommended process for electropolishing Titanium alloys

• 1. Clean in MicroClean Ti™ (RDZ-1849) (Time and temperature to be determined, no such thing as “too much”)
• 2. Water Rinse
• 3. Alcohol Rinse
• 4. ElectroPolish Ti2 (RDZ-1676), 300+ Amps/ft2, up to 10 minutes
• OR Generic Electropolish (70/30 Methanol/sulfuric) which you can make, or can purchase as Nitinol Titanium ElectroPolish (RDZ-1867), used at 7-10 volts, ~50 Amps/ft2, and below -20 degrees C.  If you are making this exciting blend, you may want to read "Control of Methanol-Sulfuric blends".

If the polishing is non-uniform, the surface may be oxidized, and require one of these treatments after the MicroClean Ti™: Either : Ti Pickling Solution (RDZ-1776), which is a mild acid de-oxidizer, or MicroClean BS™ (RDZ-1816), which is a strong acid de-oxidizer, and will remove metal.

In case you were wondering this is NOT a medical device, it is, in fact, a Titanium motorcycle peg. We had a request from a customer to see if we could polish this in the ElectroPolish Ti2™, and although we did not have enough power in the laboratory rectifier to polish the entire peg, it did a nice job on a portion. We keep this as reminder that we can polish things we would never have thought of.