Environmental-friendly Electropolishing of 304 Stainless Steel Surface

304 stainless steel is an indispensable and widely used material in our modern society. Recent development in the industry requires that the 304 stainless steel be very pure and have exceptionally smooth surfaces which cannot be achieved by traditional machining. The existing electropolishing solution of 304 stainless steel suffers from bad polishing effectiveness, high cost, environmental pollution and so on. In this work, we study the process characteristics of pulsed electrochemical polishing with environmental-friendly solutions in pursuing good polishing effectiveness, high efficiency, no environmental pollution and low cost. Successful attempts have been demonstrated with comparable results as traditional methods. The best recipe in our study includes: H3PO4 is 600ml/L, H2SO4 is 275ml/L, H2O is 125ml/L, polyethyleneglycol is 8-10g/L, glucose is 10-15g/L; and electropolishing for 4-5min at a current density of 50-55A/dm(2), a polishing temperature of 55-60 degrees C and a pulse duty ratio of 80%.