The differences between the sandpaper industries in the north and south of China
Jun 10, 2025
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Sandpaper products
Shanghai Feilun Sandpaper and Hubei Yuli Sandpaper
Shanghai
Feilun Sandpaper.
Shanghai Feilun sandpaper products are mainly made of brown corundum, with a wide range of grit sizes. They feature low sand shedding and high wear resistance, making them particularly suitable for metal grinding applications, such as stainless steel, non-ferrous metal alloys, iron products, and woodwork. They meet the grinding requirements of various industrial scenarios and are a preferred brand in the metal processing and wood treatment industries.
Hubei
Yuli Sandpaper.
Hubei Yuli sandpaper covers various types such as hard cloth base, soft cloth base, and paper base. It uses silicon carbide and aluminum oxide abrasives, with a wide range of grit sizes. It features excellent water resistance, grinding performance, heat dissipation, and chip removal capabilities. The products are widely used in woodwork, wall, and paint surface grinding, as well as solid wood floor renovation, and support both dry and wet grinding conditions. When used with dust collection equipment, it can achieve dust-free operation.
I. Selection of Raw Materials for Northern and Southern Sandpapers
1. Northern Sandpapers:
The northern sandpaper industry, relying on the abundant mineral resources in North China and Northeast China, has developed a grinding material system mainly composed of brown corundum and white corundum. For instance, a sandpaper enterprise in Hebei uses brown corundum micro-powder extracted from the tailings of iron ore in Benxi, Liaoning, which has a Mohs hardness of 9.0. Combined with high-temperature resistant adhesive made from kaolin in Datong, Shanxi, the sandpaper can maintain structural stability at 600°C. This formula system gives northern sandpapers a significant advantage in heavy machinery processing. For example, Mitsubishi brand sandpaper rolls can withstand high-intensity grinding for two consecutive hours, with a base material tensile strength of 12.8 MPa.
2. Southern Sandpapers:
Sandpaper enterprises in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions pay more attention to the innovative application of materials science. Shanghai Feilun Sandpaper uses high-quality kaolin from Yixing, Jiangsu, and German imported phenolic resin as composite base materials. Through nano-scale alumina dispersion technology, the uniformity of the abrasive layer thickness is controlled within ±2 μm. Hubei Yuli Group has developed a super-soft cloth-based sand belt, innovatively blending aramid fibers and polyester fibers in a 3:7 ratio and using water-based polyurethane base glue. This maintains the tensile strength of the sand belt while reducing the bending modulus to 65% of traditional products, making it particularly suitable for curved surface grinding of aerospace aluminum alloy components.
II. Technical Routes and Process Characteristics
product key technologies
Northern sandpaper enterprises generally adopt wide-width production lines. For instance, a certain factory in Tianjin has introduced a German Hermes four-roll coating machine with an effective width of 2.2 meters and a production speed of up to 80 meters per minute. The gravity sanding process is still widely used in the north. Through a vibration feeding system, abrasive materials are evenly distributed, and combined with a two-component epoxy resin curing process, the interlayer bonding strength of the sandpaper reaches 2.1 MPa. This process route enables a single production line to exceed a daily output of 50,000 square meters, but the particle size distribution width (PSD) of the product is controlled within ±15%, slightly higher than the ±10% standard of southern enterprises.
Southern sandpaper enterprises tend to favor electrostatic sanding technology. For example, Shanghai Feilun Sandpaper uses Japanese NCA technology, which arranges aluminum oxide abrasive materials in a single layer through a 100,000-volt electrostatic field, achieving a consistency of 92% in the exposed height of the abrasive materials. Hubei Yuli Group has developed a diamond-shaped abrasive belt sanding process, forming an abrasive array at a 15° angle on the base material surface, increasing the grinding contact area by 30% and reducing grinding heat by 30%. In the curing stage, southern enterprises generally use segmented temperature-controlled tunnel ovens. For instance, Dongguan Jintaiyang's 12-segment temperature control system keeps the curing temperature fluctuation within ±1.5°C, ensuring uniform cross-linking density of the adhesive.
III. Product Characteristics
1. Rigidity and Durability of Northern Sandpaper
Typical products such as Hebei Jin Niu brand sandpaper rolls, which are made of 45# steel substrate and combined with silicon carbide abrasive, have a single sheet service life of up to 45 minutes in automotive cylinder block grinding tests, which is 1.8 times that of similar southern products. However, its drawback lies in insufficient flexibility, with a minimum bending radius of 150mm, which limits its application in the field of precision molds. The particle size distribution of northern sandpaper shows a "double peak feature", for example, 80# sandpaper contains both 60# and 100# particle size abrasives. This design can increase the material removal rate in rough machining, but it may cause fluctuations in surface roughness.
2. Precision and Adaptability of Southern Sandpaper
Shanghai Feilun brand aluminum oxide sandpaper, after special moisture-proof treatment, has a grinding rate decline of only 8% after being stored in an environment with a relative humidity of 90% for 72 hours, which is far superior to the 25% decline rate of northern products. Hubei Yuli Group's ultra-precision sand belts, which are made by combining nanometer diamond abrasives with elastic polyester films, can achieve a surface roughness of Ra0.01μm in optical glass processing. Southern sandpaper excels in flexibility, for instance, Feilun brand sandpaper can be bent to a radius of 50mm without breaking, making it suitable for grinding the irregular structures of 3C electronic products.
IV. Comparative Analysis of Typical Products
| Product Model | Shanghai Feilun FL-867 | Hubei Yuli YL-900 | Hebei Mitsubishi SL-500 |
| Base Materia | Semi-resinized synthetic fiber cloth | super-soft polyester film | all-resin cotton cloth |
| Abrasive | Aluminum oxide | silicon carbide | brown corundum |
| Grain Size | P800 | P1200 | P60 |
| Temperature Resistance | 120℃ | 80℃ | 150℃ |
| Minimum Bending Radius | 50mm | 30mm | 150mm |
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