Maybe a dremel?

 

pickling paste

 

i suppose i should elaborate;

the heat discoloration of stainless steel from welding leaves surface deposits that make the base metal more susceptible to localized corrosion. there are three main means to remove this. abrasives, electrolysis, and chemical etching (at least this is what comes to mind at the moment) abrasives are the least expensive and fastest, but not as effective you could be grinding the contamination back into the base metal, not to mention inside corners, and hard to reach areas. chemical etching, is more expensive and more time consuming, but also more effective. then there are the electrolysis machines and wash solutions expensive, time consuming, but very effective. not only removing heat stains but removing all contaminants from the piece.
stainless pickling paste is a chemical etching that is intended to be used for the exact situation that you have. it can be hard to find and a bit spendy. if you cant get your hands on the paste then get a little more creative. i believe that the main ingredient is phosphorus and/or hydrocloric acid these can be found at any hardware store, i think in drain cleaners, naval jelly, and other cleaners. you need to be careful not to use too high of a concentration of acid but i dont think a product sourced from a hardware store would reach that level. and then you need to be sure nuetral ize and remove that acid once its done its job.
it been a while but i believe the last time i was in a pinch i mixed some naval jelly with some drain cleaner, then clean up with ammonia. it was naval jelly and something....

anyway hope that helps, and i've never heard of a 'dry' product to clean the heat marks.

 

We use a Walter Surfox to clean our welds. I think that the one we have is the 204 model. It works pretty good with the regular solution but the next round I'm going to order the heavy duty solution.

 

+ 2 on the Walters Heavy Duty solution .......

 

Clean the metal REALLY REALLY good before hand and avoid all that black and brown/yellow aftertaste...
Contamination of your tungsten is also a culprit...

Or use a SS "Toothbrush" on it.


...zap!

 

Think He's meaning to get the color off it afterwards. In any dairy or food application, they want the welds polished or etched "clean" showing no discoloration.

Dairy welder, the chemical method is slick and fast. Once you get set up, it's cake. Moose here built his own transformer and get solution from a company to do his own stuff. During the short while I worked on a dairy farm, the guy I worked for was considering buying one of those chemical outfits to clean the welds. We would just wire brush most stuff, but you can't always get a brush everywhere you need to clean. Try PMing moose and seeing what he's using. It was pretty cool. He brought it to a get together I put on a couple years ago. I don't think he had a lot cost wise in it either.

IMHO of course

 

Somewhere online I saw a video where "Mr. Tig"

used some kind of electrolysis / reagent thing ... it looked like you clamped a ground clamp on the material to be cleaned (just like you would with a welder or plasma cutter) and then you wiped off the discoloration with a wetted sponge that was held in the "stinger." It looked pretty slick, though I suspect it did some funky things to the metal on a microscopic level...

You might want to go to YouTube and look for videos by "Mr. Tig"

 

Soda blaster works too.

 

Thanks for all the input guys... I've got different polishing pads and dedicated ss wire brushes for cleaning welds and have seen the videos of the powered chemical type cleaner, which would be awesome to have. Problem with that it took three years to talk my boss into buying a belt sander so talking him into a couple thousand dollar machine is out of the question. He says there's a dry chemical you can brush on and wash off but he doesn't know the name and I've never used it so I was hoping someone here would know. Maybe it's soda blaster or pickling paste? I will run those names by him see if that rings his bell


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$2.99 SS wire brush. Done.

 

The SS toothbrush won't quite finish the corner, Pickling paste:http://www.diywelding.co.uk/images/ww/antoxlp.gif

 

Nylon bristle brush(cup brush) on drill motor

 

Nylon, but why? Try one of these on a hot weld instead. It still won't get into the corner though.

 

Less finish work after. You can blend blemishes with a scotch bright pad.

 

The brushes we use are impregnated with some kind of abrasive.The one in the picture is 120 grit. Works good on sq tube and angle.

 

One problem in the pickling pastes is the acid. Especially Hydrofluoric Acid (HF). While it is relatively "mild" as far as acids go, it can have devastating effects. I will not have it in my home, and I like nasty chemicals. Stuff eats glass, titanium, bone and other things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrofluoric_acid

Make up a little electropolishing setup with a battery charger and some phosphoric acid.