Simple tumbler from a recyled paint stirrer

Gene Olson - Tuesday, January 1, 2008 - 12:37pm

Simple tumbler from a recyled paint stirrer

This is one of the tumblers I use.

I got the idea from Barb, the owner of a hardware company in New England.

She told about having set up a whole wall of these running off one motor.

Each pail can have a different grit polish in it.
parts can be loaded into a pail of grit and placed into the tumbler mechanism
then removed and dumped onto a screen to sift out the parts and polish.

The polish goes back in the pail for the next batch,
the parts are cleansed and loaded into the next finer polish pail,
and that pail is loaded into the mechanism.

Works great. though I need to make a better lifter than just the 2x2 on the side, that puts too much stress on a single spot on the plastic pail.
It needs to be wider at the base where it sits on the plastic pail side.

The mechanism is a commercial paint stirrer I picked up at an auction of an old hardware store.
I just drilled another hole in the angle adjustment to make the pail more horizontal so that parts could tumble.

Here are some tumbled parts.

Tumbled tools: Repoussé tools tumbled clean after hardening. They were tumbled in a sawdust/course hand rubbing compound mixture. (available at your local auto parts/paint store) This removes all the caked black oxides and cooked on corn oil from quench.

Gene

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Very good description of

webminster - Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 1:07pm

Very good description of your tumbler Gene. I have one question though. How long do you normally run the tumbler to descale the ironwork?

Thanks for sharing!

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The parts were clean when I

Gene Olson - Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - 1:31pm

The parts were clean when I checked after about 4 hrs, but I let it run over night 'cause I wanted the parts to polish up some.

Gene Olson
Sculptor
Elk River, MN

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Tumbler

Glen Jones - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 1:01am

Hi Gene,
have you heard of a simmilar tumbler machine that can be used to polish SS?

Cheers
Glen
Down Under

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Polishing is a function of

Gene Olson - Thursday, January 3, 2008 - 11:15am

Polishing is a function of the media and the grit placed in the machine.

for fragile parts, there are things called vibratory tumblers that create flow by jiggling the media and parts. These might be better for a high polish, as you won't get dings from the parts hitting each other.

Check out Electopolishing for stainless that may be better for your purpose.

Gene Olson
Sculptor
Elk River, MN

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Hi Gene, I've been thinking

eligius1427 - Friday, January 4, 2008 - 12:40pm

Hi Gene,
I've been thinking about building a tumbler to remove the dross/slag and soften the edges of small flame and plasma cut parts. Is this something that a tumbler could do? If so what kink of media would you suggest?

Jake

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Tumbler media

Gene Olson - Friday, January 4, 2008 - 1:21pm

The commercial stuff for that would be something like cast tetrahedral stars, that gives the points to reach into holes and edges to wear off the flash/slag/dross.

In practice all the small bits of scrap coming off the bandsaw, and your cutting scraps will work fine.

The parts will also wear against each other. When I tumble the chasing tools it burnishes the hardened ends and deburrs the edges of the struck end.

If all the edges of your parts are critical and need to be protected, you may need to float them in enough media that they only tend to bump into each other occasionally. A vibratory tumbler would be best then.

Gene Olson
Sculptor
Elk River, MN

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