End-treatment or pre-treatment?
Our hot pickling provides an even, grey surface free from oxides, pollutants and discoloration. What makes hot pickling (also called NOX-pickling) unique is that the whole surface is treated, not just the welded and oxidized surfaces.
Immediately after pickling and rinsing, the natural chrome-oxide layer is recreated which makes stainless steel “stainless”. If you need a smooth and clean surface, free from pollutants, oxides and discolouring, hot pickling is the optimal surface treatment for stainless steel.
Hot pickling is also the best pre-treatment for stainless surfaces before electropolishing. It avoids etching and uneven results from electropolishing.
Applications for hot pickling
Hot pickling can be used when you require an even metallurgical cleanliness without pollutants, or when you want to avoid involuntary corrosion or discolouration due to pollutants inherent in the steel. There is also the aesthetic reason, as the surface created with pickling is smooth and uniform.
There are many areas of application, but some of the more common ones are:
- Paper and pulp
- Pharmaceutical
- Automotive
- Food manufacturing
- Stainless steel constructions in general
- Titanium applications
Do you need absolute cleanliness?
Post-treatment is important for the end result. Some products require absolute cleanliness without stains. Our solution to this is rinsing with ultra-pure water that we manufacture ourselves. If a high level of cleanliness is required we can also dry and package products in our clean room.
Different grades of steel
We can pickle austenitic, ferritic, austenitic-ferritic (Duplex) grades of Stainless steel, some Nickel alloys and Titanium. Before pickling, the product must be degreased as not to harm product or process.
Read more about the advantages with warm pickling here.