The future of metal finishing

There are two types of metal finishing: ? Mechanical means (deburring, polishing, drying, or what's popularly called mass finishing); ? or chemical means (plating, electroplating, painting, or powder/liquid coating, etc.). Concern about the interaction of humans and the environment with chemicals used in finishing operations (chromium, cadmium or lead, acids and bases, or "toxic solvents") will threaten mechanical finishing much less than it will threaten chemical finishing means. We expect the short-term future of metal finishing work to be changed from: ? Solvent cleaning to aqueous cleaning; ? solvent-borne to water-borne coatings, ? soldering with lead to soldering with alloys rich in tin and zinc; ? electropolishing to produce metal oxide waste to reusing that metal oxide waste; ? and plating with chromium and cadmium to applying other protective surface finishes via non-electrolytic means. The focus of this column is on a much longer time scale.