Non painted aluminum enclosures, do you sand? To what grit?

[peAk]

Just curious what the general thought is on bare aluminum enclosures that you do not want to paint and plan one keeping bare

Do you sand them? If so, to what grit?

[davent]

That will depend entirely on the degree of polish you want to achieve.

[jkokura]

80, 120, 160, 200, 250, 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500

Then polish with some aluminum polish, and you've got yourself a very shiny box.

Jacob

[EBRAddict]

I've used 80 and then 240 on a belt sander. Not mirror finished more like brushed aluminum. It's fine for waterslide decals.

[pickdropper]

Do you really go through ALL of those grits?  That seems like a bit of overkill.  I am sure the boxes look great, but damn.

Whenever I've sanded and polished, I've used about a third of that number of grits and it was still miserable.  :-)


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[TGP39]

Do you really go through ALL of those grits?  That seems like a bit of overkill.  I am sure the boxes look great, but damn.

Whenever I've sanded and polished, I've used about a third of that number of grits and it was still miserable.  :-)


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+1
Steve.

[micromegas]

that's a lot of elbow grease Jacob... a lot.
At this point, I imagine you'll have a forearm like this one  :

[peAk]

I was kind of curious where people stop at.

Like 800, or 1000

Are most people going up to 2500? 

[miter53]

1000 and then a buffing wheel.

[flanagan0718]

I go 150, 220, 500, 1200. Then apply water slide and clear coat. Sometimes I even skip the 150 depending on how bad the enclosure looks out of the box.

[jkokura]

Do you really go through ALL of those grits?  That seems like a bit of overkill.  I am sure the boxes look great, but damn.

Whenever I've sanded and polished, I've used about a third of that number of grits and it was still miserable.  :-)


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+1
Steve.

Depends on the level of polish I guess. I did one with fewer, but it didn't really seem as good. I probably didn't do much with the higher, just a little. I find that if you do really well with then 80 at first, it really is easy at the end. The more you do early on, the better the end result is.

Jacob

[alanp]

I've done one or two nonpainted builds in my time and I haven't bothered with sanding a single one. Couldn't be arsed. (To be fair, all my painted builds, the painting was done by someone *else*, not me.)