This is another 'we're doing this at work, but everything is relevant to y'all at home' projects.
We've been buffing some TIG welded stainless assemblies for a few years now and it's a bit of a pain:
1.You get a shiny weld which contrasts the satin finish on the rest of it.
2.You have to get the wax off.
3.Then you have to get the stuff you used to get the wax off, off.
We could just use pickling paste, but all the ones that work have HF acid in them and that's nasty even by my lax workplace safety standards.
I decided to look into electro-polishing and a quick search turned up a candidate solution of Citric and Sulfuric acids, neither at nasty concentrations... This looked promising as I'd assumed we would have to use hot phosphoric/sulfuric acid. Out came an old mop bucket, in went some lead flashing for a cathode, and 7 minutes at 10A later out came the part. All it needed was a quick wipe under running water and presto!
I've started a thread on this, because I think I'm going to automate the process and that should be interesting...
PK