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Home Made Case Cleaner


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Greeting to all from Virginia...I have been reloading since the mid 70's and a loyal Dillon products user since day one.I have been interested in the Stainless Steel Media almost a years now. Read every posting from different sites and did some checking for available equipment. Shy of a concrete mixer,the majority of the drums only allow small quantity's of brass. Being a home hobby machinist,with the occasional fit of madness,I decided to made a drum with the capability of 500 plus 5.56 cases. For general info about the drum,it is a piece of utility PVC water supply pipe that has a internal diameter of 8 inch's with a length of 12 inches. I have been working up a photo collection that I will post to my favorite hobby machinist chat site once this monster has life. I have on hand a Dayton reduction gear drive motor that has a 1/4 HP an output rate of 5.6 R.P.M.'S. My logic is to have the brass rolled and tumbled by internal baffles inside the drum. Now I am not sure if the R.P.M rate will be slow and extend the run time needed to accomplish a desired cleaning. I can make an external gear combination to get whatever final drum rate. So my question to anyone that has a working liquid system,what is your approximate drum rotation rate. Thank you to all that may reply...My best wishes to all from Virginia.JoeA

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I use stainless media with a Thumler model B and like the results a lot. You might want to check out this thread:

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=141007

Check out this one as well. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=130815&st=50&p=1516517&hl=case%20tumbler&fromsearch=1entry1516517

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Greeting to all from Virginia...I have been reloading since the mid 70's and a loyal Dillon products user since day one.I have been interested in the Stainless Steel Media almost a years now. Read every posting from different sites and did some checking for available equipment. Shy of a concrete mixer,the majority of the drums only allow small quantity's of brass. Being a home hobby machinist,with the occasional fit of madness,I decided to made a drum with the capability of 500 plus 5.56 cases. For general info about the drum,it is a piece of utility PVC water supply pipe that has a internal diameter of 8 inch's with a length of 12 inches. I have been working up a photo collection that I will post to my favorite hobby machinist chat site once this monster has life. I have on hand a Dayton reduction gear drive motor that has a 1/4 HP an output rate of 5.6 R.P.M.'S. My logic is to have the brass rolled and tumbled by internal baffles inside the drum. Now I am not sure if the R.P.M rate will be slow and extend the run time needed to accomplish a desired cleaning. I can make an external gear combination to get whatever final drum rate. So my question to anyone that has a working liquid system,what is your approximate drum rotation rate. Thank you to all that may reply...My best wishes to all from Virginia.JoeA

my drum speed with my 8" pvc drum is 55-60 rpm and my 6" drum is 70 rpm

IMG_4484.jpg

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It uses two buckets, the outer "drive" bucket is part of the machine, it's just notched so the inner bucket will nest inside. The inner tumbling bucket has 4, 1.5"x1/2" vanes in it.

I made it so large because the process is a lot more involved than dry tumbling. With the final wash after cleaning and drying time, I decided before I started using SS media the batch sizes needed to be at least twice what my big Dillon tumbler would hold for it to be worth the trouble.

As you can see a gallon of .223 and a few handfulls of 458 are just a drop in the bucket, to what it can hold.

2.jpg

Edited by jmorris
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  • 11 months later...

Jmorris,

Do find that your setup works well for small qtys of brass? Say in the 100-200 pcs of .40 or .223 or even 20-60 pcs of 30-06.? I don't have a lot of brass but the availibilty of the buckets and the resulting design appeals to me.

thanks

Bob

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  • 1 year later...

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