I have now found out that Extude Hone will NOT sell you their media, unless you have bought one of their machines. I do not know if this is a market ploy or liability factor, but... The media is a silicon carbide base material. Those of you that have your own shops and do any lapping this may make some sense. I use a product called Clover lapping compound. It is 1000 grit and made by LocTite and available through McMaster-Carr. Now, I have seen the Extrude hone media in their brochures which show a few colors being red, blue and yellow. This is just a marketting scheme to make you feel... Cool! neat colors! In reality its a drab grey. So is the Lapping compound!! Hmmm.... I did some more digging and found that when extrude honing was invented, they used a hand pump hydraulic cylinder to push this compound through the parts. So what was good then should still in effect be good. I built my own extrude hone and will try out using this Clover lapping compound. It is a bit soupy, not putty form but I can always thicken it. Extrude Hone (Kennametal) wants 125K for a machine that I built for under $500.00 and is being quite closed lipped on the media. This is America and its full of smart people who can figure things out. The article I read about Extrude Hone in their early days, it said they tried peanut butter and tooth paste!!! Ok, its fun to experiment and who knows... maybe toothpaste works.  |