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Webinar outline

When specifying stainless steel, attention is often placed on alloy selection, yet surface finish plays an equally critical role in determining durability, performance and appearance.

From bright mirror-polished surfaces to abraded, blasted, profiled, or coloured finishes, stainless steel offers a wide spectrum of surface conditions, each with distinct implications for corrosion resistance, cleanability, reflectivity, strength, and slip resistance. Despite this, surface finish is frequently under-specified or even overlooked.

This webinar will explore why surface finish should be a key consideration in material specification, not an afterthought. It will examine how finishes are created, from hot and cold rolling through to mechanical and chemical treatments, including pickling and passivation, and how these processes influence both visual and functional outcomes.

Key topics include:
  • Differences between hot and cold rolled finishes
  • The impact of cutting, abrading, blasting, and profiling
  • How surface roughness and thickness affect performance
  • The role of finishes in corrosion resistance, hygiene, and cleanability
  • The importance of surface treatments such as pickling and passivation in restoring corrosion resistance after fabrication
  • What surface processing does and does not change
  • Coatings, colouring treatments, and their durability
  • Managing consistency across product forms
  • The limitations of chemical and electrochemical treatments

Covering austenitic, ferritic, and duplex stainless steels, this session will provide practical guidance to help designers, architects, and engineers make more informed decisions, ensuring the selected surface finish aligns with both aesthetic intent and service performance.

Attendees are encouraged to submit specific cases in advance or bring them up during the Q&A session (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Presenter: Dr Graham Sussex, ASSDA Technical Consultant

Dr. Graham Sussex is a materials expert with over 30 years of experience and more than 600 technical publications to his name. Stainless steel is his specialty. 

Cost:

 
This webinar will be hosted by Zoom.