slavex Posted August 27, 2007 Share Posted August 27, 2007 was just at my buddies work, a high end CNC shop. sitting outside polishing parts was a giant freakin tumbler. I mean huge the bowl had to be 3 ft across and the whole unit sat about 3.5 ft high. Speed control and timer on the unit and everything. no lid, as they don't bother with it (it's long lost I think). I asked how much and his boss told me new they go for around $1200 CDN. I figure a person could easily put 5000 9mm cases in there if not twice that. We are going to try it out in a few weeks if we can, as we both have a few 5 gallon pails of brass sitting around, and I have a ton of corn cob media sitting at the farm. anyone ever seen one of these things before? they litterally use chunks of rocks to debur and polish parts they've machined (not sure what kind of parts, as some would just get wrecked in there). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mscott Posted August 27, 2007 Share Posted August 27, 2007 We had 2 of them in a fabrication shop. They were used for getting burrs off of punched and burned out parts. Ours was pretty slow, so I'm not sure how it would have worked for brass. It also had lots of holes for the iron dust and debris to fall out, so no media of any sort would have worked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted August 27, 2007 Share Posted August 27, 2007 Rotary tumbling has the unfortunate tendency to peen over the mouths of the brass. It will be clean, but depending on how severe, will need to be trimmed prior to loading. Otherwise, you'll shave the bullet (jacketed, lead, doesn't matter...) during seating and will experience a high rate of feed jams. BTDTGTTS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aircooled6racer Posted August 27, 2007 Share Posted August 27, 2007 Hello: When you tumble parts in a rotary tumbler you can adjust the angle of the drum. If it is too high the parts will tend not to move around. The same is true if it is set too low. You have to watch the parts to get the right angle. There are all sorts of tumbling media that can be used including wood, plastic,sand,rice,feed corn,gravel etc. It just depends on how much metal you want to remove. You can also use a slurry mix as well. If you want a big tumbler get a cement mixer with a plastic drum. They came in different sizes as well. Ultrasonic cleaners work great with heater elements to warm the solution up. I just use 2 tumblers. One for first cleaning and the second for polishing. Hope this helps. Thanks, Eric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slavex Posted August 27, 2007 Author Share Posted August 27, 2007 this machine isn't a rotary, it's a vibration one just like the Dillons, Midway etc. only much much bigger. same kind of bowl too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
buddy_fuentes Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 aircooled6racer.....try Iosso's brass polish. I use corn cob and walnut mixed with four caps full of Iosso's polish. It even cleans the inside of the brass and cuts cleaning time to a little more than an hour. We ran into it at the SHOT show a couple of years ago and it is the best stuff I have seen. When your media turns black...add a couple of caps full again and keep on cleaning. Good stuff, Buddy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
foxtrotuniformlima Posted August 28, 2007 Share Posted August 28, 2007 this machine isn't a rotary, it's a vibration one just like the Dillons, Midway etc. only much much bigger. same kind of bowl too. I remember someone talking about using that kind of polisher for mag tubes. They use the ceramic media designed to polish SS and they came out very smoooth. As far as brass, I guess it would be the ticket, most of us don't have that kind of budget Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rock-N-Ruin Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 Like someone above, I have two Thumblers tumblers: The first one has walnut for cleaning and the second (bigger one) has corncob for polishing.. I am curently using Dillon's case polish, going to change from Lyman CC media to the stuff at petco and I've heard Nu-Finish car polish (a couple capfuls) works great.. If anyone has anyother suggestions that would be appreciated.. I am trying to cut cost on cleaning.. Also these Thumblers Tumblers have been going non stop 24/7 for the last 8 months with maybe a day or two break and i've been using them since the early 90's, just stepped up production/shooting in the last 8 months.. Jeff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markm Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 (edited) http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/disp...temnumber=91907 I got one of these, 5 gal buckets go real fast, no problems. Cut a metal screen from Home Depot and formed a large basket to catch brass and let media fall thru to large plastic trash can. (takes a little hand shaking to get it all out). Use 25 lb box of walnut from harbor freight also to tumble brass and add about 1oz of mineral spirits and 1 oz of Nu Car polish to media. 5 gal bucket takes about an hour. YMMV Edited December 10, 2007 by markm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RePete Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/disp...temnumber=91907I got one of these, 5 gal buckets go real fast, no problems. Cut a metal screen from Home Depot and formed a large basket to catch brass and let media fall thru to large plastic trash can. (takes a little hand shaking to get it all out). Use 25 lb box of walnut from harbor freight also to tumble brass and add about 1oz of mineral spirits and 1 oz of Nu Car polish to media. 5 gal bucket takes about an hour. YMMV I was going to mention that I read about a guy that used a small, cheap, cement mixer to tumble his brass. I've been thinking about doing this myself. I saw a small one at the House of Tools in Calgary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmorris Posted December 10, 2007 Share Posted December 10, 2007 Vibratory finishing equipment like http://www.massfin.com/index.php?kc=UB9rH would definitely work but you won’t use the same media for deburring machined steel parts that you would for polishing thin brass parts. In most of the large ones I’ve used the media is ¾-1/2” in diameter, guaranteed to turn the “rocks” a gold color and dissolve your 5gal bucket of brass. http://www.beads.productfromchina.net/html...h_granuals.html sells a variety of different Medias, so you might contact them or do a sample run before destroying all of your brass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shred Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 FWIW, I don't like the Harbor Freight walnut blasting media as much as pet litter. It seems to stop cleaning sooner and get everywhere faster.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RePete Posted December 12, 2007 Share Posted December 12, 2007 Also Home Hardware has one. Stock number 2620-177 for $399.99, it has a poly drum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slavex Posted December 13, 2007 Author Share Posted December 13, 2007 was just at my buddies work again, and they've got a new tumbler. this one is rectangular in shape with a round bottom. it's rubber lined (for noise I guess) and is filled with big chunks of pyramid bits of stone (or something like that), it also has a high volume pump on it and flushes a liquid cleaner through the whole thing. We are gonna do a couple pails next week and see how the chunks of rock beat up the brass. I don't expect it too though, as this is the machine they use for very high tolerance parts, including some copper/beryllium parts for some spy satellites or something (some hitech government contract actually). a length of pipe 6 inches in diameter and 1ft long and 3inches thick is worth around $2500, and the end product is about 1/10th the material. scary stuff. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EricW Posted December 13, 2007 Share Posted December 13, 2007 Be careful with BeCu. It's pretty toxic stuff, particularly in powder form (like tumbling residue). You could very well end up contaminating your brass and yourself when you handle it. Sounds to me like an experiment I'd avoid. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmorris Posted December 14, 2007 Share Posted December 14, 2007 1000000000 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slavex Posted December 14, 2007 Author Share Posted December 14, 2007 we'll be using different media then what they use for the BeCu parts, possibly even normal corn cob media, but then that means no liquid cleaning action. I talked to my buddy today and he said his boss was OK with us using the machine, but not that particular media. They have lots of other stuff for us to play with. I should've taken pics with my phone, but I always forget it has a camera. They've now got 10 CNC mills, including a new horizontal mill that holds 40 tools. Plus a bunch of CNC turning centers and a couple CNC lathes. if only I knew how to program................ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coach Posted January 11, 2011 Share Posted January 11, 2011 I am tired of burning up tumblers. Is there a major draw back to a cement mixer? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slavex Posted June 27, 2013 Author Share Posted June 27, 2013 man, necro post. So we ended up trying out the liquid tumbler first way back when, they had some SS media almost exactly the same as the stuff people use in the small ultrasonic cleaners for brass. 20 minutes in the big tank and the brass looked like new. 1hr, and it was destroyed. Absolutely worn out basically. Timing is important. Not even sure if the stuff at 20 minutes would have been ok to reload (we just let it go longer to see what would happen). The big one that looks like my Midway tumbler we put two 5 gallon pails of brass into along with 50 lbs of corn cob media (one bottle of Flitz added before hand). 30 minutes, clean brass. 1hr clean brass (no cleaner). So we ran 10 buckets of brass through over 6 hrs (seperating takes awhile). Definitely worth it if you have access to one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heavyopp Posted June 27, 2013 Share Posted June 27, 2013 I am tired of burning up tumblers. Is there a major draw back to a cement mixer? What kind of tumblers are you burning out? What is your process? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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