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I Forge Iron

New tumbler


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Greetings all! I just finished my new tumbler. The body is 24 inches from left to right, and the bar in the middle is 1 " diameter. It is running about 29rpm through a gear reducer. After I took this picture, I coated the inside of it with truck bed liner. It's not overly noisy, but a constant noise that starts to get on my nerves after a while. Ear plugs and turning the radio up seem to help. :lol:

I ended up getting it finished when they were throwing away 250# of tumbling media (new in bag) at work. It's a triangular stone. I've run a few batches of parts, and it seems to embed some of the dust into the parts.

I'm planning on tumbling smaller laser cut aluminum and stainless steel plates. I don't need a real aggressive cut, just a light deburring and maybe a bit of a frosted finish. I'm going to try black magnum coal slag today and see what it ends up doing. Any other recommendations on media for tumbling dry? I'd like to prevent an extra washing step afterwards.

Jamie

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We do all of our tumbling wet with a soap added, parts come out beautiful. That department uses aluminum oxide, as well as plastic media, depending on what needs to be done. Out tumbling is actually done with vibratory bowls, but the process is comparable. The soapy water helps to keep the parts clean, and bright. We also have a low through system where fresh water is constantly flowing over that parts flushing out the dust. We work with copper,brass, beryllium copper, stainless, and some aluminum. Media ismostly pyramids, with some baloney cut cylinders used as well.

Another company I worked for built their tumblers-like yours, but doubled up. They had 1" thick urethane cast into the inside, and you could barely hear them when they were running. The only problem they had was the shafts were just welded on either end, and after some flexing they cracked the welds. I rewelded them, and as far as I know no problems since. They failed due to poor design, and insufficient welds.

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Thanks for the input. We have vibratory tumblers at work with the plastic pyramids and water flush as well. This was one of my projects for home.

I tried the coal slag blasting medium, and it barely caused a scratch. It was also quite a bit quieter.

I wanted to avoid adding water, since this is in my shop and it freezes in there sometimes.

Jamie

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I've got a small (5 gal) tumbler that I use for deburring parts. I just use old pieces of cut off stock from the bandsaw and misc. dry wall screws, nails, bad bolts, etc. Metal on metal. Everything comes out pretty clean, but after awhile I have to trade out the "media" and clean out the bucket to get rid of the slag dust and scale that gets knocked off. I would think that if using metal "media" you would have to use similar metals or you would get rusting issues.

Maybe try a little play sand to trap and hold the dust? I've heard that walnut shells work well too.

-Derek

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I have a feeling that I'll have to go with stainless steel media to get the results I'm looking for. I've tried actual tumbling media (it imbedded dust into the parts), coal slag (barely caused a scratch) and invisibily rusty steel shot(didn't know it had rust until I took out the rusty aluminum). I have some samples that I sent to one of the media companies. I'll update this when they tell me which I should use.

Jamie

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