Mirror polishing - Kyomenkenma

...A general term for surface finishing methods that use abrasives to scrape or polish the surface of metals, glass, plastics, ceramics, stone, rubber, and other workpieces in minute increments to produce a desired size, shape, and quality. Methods that use abrasives as fine powder free abrasives include lapping, polishing, buffing, barrel processing, jet processing, and ultrasonic processing, while methods that use abrasives as fixed abrasives include cloth abrasive processing, which uses paper or cloth with abrasives attached to the surface, honing, grinding, and superfinishing, which use abrasives processed into a grinding wheel. Grinding is also included in polishing, but in the narrow sense, (ultra-precision) lapping and (ultra-precision) polishing, which can produce a mirror finish (mirror polishing) with a surface roughness of 0.01 μm or less, are often referred to as polishing. These mirror polishing methods are performed by inserting abrasives and abrasive liquid between the sample and the tool and rubbing them together.

*Some of the terminology that refers to "mirror polishing" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…研磨材によって金属，ガラス，プラスチック，セラミックス，石材，ゴムなどの工作物表面をごく微少量ずつ削ったり，すり磨いたりして，所定の寸法，形状，品質に加工する表面仕上げ法の総称。研磨材を微粉状の遊離砥粒（とりゆう）として使用するものには，ラッピング，ポリシング，バフ仕上げ，バレル加工，噴射加工，超音波加工などが，また，固定砥粒として使用する加工法には，研磨材を表面に固着させた紙や布を用いる研磨布紙加工，研磨材をといしに加工して用いるホーニングや研削加工および超仕上げなどがあり，研削も研磨に含まれることになるが，狭義には，このうちとくに表面あらさが0.01μm以下の鏡面仕上げ(鏡面研磨)が行える(超精密)ラッピングや(超精密)ポリシングを研磨と呼ぶことが多い。これらの鏡面研磨は，試料と工具の間に砥粒と研磨液を入れてすり合わせる操作が用いられる。…

※「鏡面研磨」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

出典｜株式会社平凡社世界大百科事典 第２版について | 情報