AFTER PLANE GRINDING AND FINE GRINDING THE SPECIMEN SURFACE must be polished to obtain the true microstructure or a structure, which is satisfactory for a given analysis. In principle, the surface always will have a certain deformation (artifacts), but if not too deep this can often be removed through the etching of the surface (see Chapter 9). For a thorough description of artifacts and how to avoid them, see Section 13.5/6.