Parts dropped into a tub with abrasive media — ceramic chips, plastic pyramids, walnut shells, steel ball-bearings — and vibrated or rotated for hours. The media tumbles with the parts; sharp edges round, surfaces smooth, the finish reads as soft satin or polished depending on media. Standard mass-finishing for jewelry findings, fasteners, small castings — anything you'd otherwise have to deburr by hand.
Vibratory or centrifugal mass-finishing: parts and abrasive media in a vibrating bowl (vibratory) or rotating barrel (rotary tumbler) for 1–24 hr depending on cut required. Media classes: ceramic (high cut, satin finish), plastic (medium cut, polished finish), steel ball-bearing (high polish via burnishing — no abrasive cut), walnut-shell or corn-cob (final dry polish, drying and polishing combined). Compound additives — soap-based for cleaning, abrasive slurries for accelerated cut, burnishing compounds for shine. Surface roughness Ra 0.4–0.8 µm typical from ceramic; Ra ~0.1 µm from steel-shot burnishing. Standard for jewelry casting cleanup, fastener manufacturing, sintered-powder-metal parts, small CNC parts where hand-deburring would dominate cost.
character — uniform soft satin to polished, edge-rounded, mass-production register.
ASM Handbook Vol. 5 Surface Engineering; manufacturer abrasives literature (3M, Norton, Mirka).
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway, Lefteri, Forty, Sparke, ASM, GIA. Every voice: Voices.
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