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Has anyone made their own heavy duty tumbler im looking for some ideas/tips theres plenty of dinky ones available but i need something a fair size to cope with hundreds of alloy parts for deburring, removing machining marks to add a good key for powder coating and the likes,ta
Electric cement mixer.
oil drum size
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAwDTXFeUk
Have you considered sand blasting ?
Tip - curved sides help with movement of the media,
I did a make shift one a few years ago. used two round washing up bowls placed top to top and cut a hole out in the top one. fixed that to a board which was mounted on springs to a lower board. Fixed a spare ac motor to the bottom board with a lump of metal with an offset hole in to mount to the motor spindle. All done!
Sorry for lack of detail but recon you get the idea, now off to workshop.
thanks both i did have a drum affair in mind ,i hadnt thought of a cement mixer nice idea!
Oil drum mounted like a spit roast, blades welded to the outside, wind powered tumbler, if you're quick you might catch the next lot of gales. :stupid:
thanks swarfing that sounds just like the one in the video, i follow this chap quite a bit with having simular interests its simple enough to put together but wasnt very effective in his case and he ended up buying one in.Quote:
Originally Posted by Swarfing
Tumbler Part 1 - home made - YouTube
that trumps my idea of steam power, genius :highly_amused:Quote:
Originally Posted by EddyCurrent
It helps that bowls have sloping sides which moves the media up the outsides to the middle. if you can mount the motor vertically then the media rotates
I've done a bit research into this, but not brought myself to build anything, as I can't decide between vibrate or tumble!
The most common commercial tumblers I found were essentially plastic lined square boxes with a couple bearings and a motor. On the homebrew front, the most popular method seemed to involve a plastic barrel in a mounting frame running on a couple bearings (just need to fit a new barrel when it wears out, whereas the commercial units have to be relined). Spin it end over end and you shouldn't need any baffles. Plastic is preferred as it helps reduce sound, and is far less likely to damage softer parts.
I'd love to speak to someone who's got experience with finishing methods, as I never found any real answers to what method works better for what. I know a lot will be down to media choice, and how quickly you want to acheive the desired result, however it would be good to find an independant opinion that isn't biased into selling me something!
Hi Deisel,
Not sure how far you got with this, I'm making a small tumbler at the mo, but whilst looking around I found these two vids on YTube:
http://youtu.be/oh2kdAhk60I
http://youtu.be/opXT3CUaox4
Both seem well designed / built and I can't see why they wouldn't scale up to a bigger barrel...
Oh, and m_c - try this:
http://www.abrasiveengineering.com/bkmassfin.html
...which I found the link for here:
http://www.candmtopline.com/faq.html
w./
Hi everyone, several years ago I used to help out a paint sprayer from a couple of units next to mine with cleaning both steel and aluminium parts before painting. Having a precast concrete business I had access to both a large concrete mixer and large vibrating table. Steel parts went in the mixer with dry black shot blasting sand. The aluminium parts used the same sand in plastic tubs sat on the vibrating table.
I have to say it cleaned them up a treat and far quicker than trying to do it by hand, we used the vibration method on the aluminium parts so they didn't get damaged with the mixers paddles. If anyone wants any help with making a vibrating table just give me a shout, happy to help.
Mike
This is all good as I need to make a couple of tumblers for work to tumble the wedgepins we have as some are a little rusty on the outside straight from the machinists and some have a little surface rust from storage. I'll be checking out the videos and looking at what can be done. At the moment we use a small weed spray bottle adapted for the C4 lathe!! Would be interesting to see what's the best media for tumbling, what do people use for media for steel?
According to the link above:Quote:
Originally Posted by njhussey
For polishing steel, stainless, aluminum and plastic parts, porcelain media is the most common media used. If you are doing stainless or other steels any shape of porcelain can be used. One of the most common polish medias used is a 3/16-3/8 angle cut cylinder. The theory is that a cylinder has more surface contact with the part than other shapes.