Drum Sanders for Metal Finishing - Straight Grain Finishing

[xplodee]

Hello All-

I have a production application where we need to impart a straight-grain finish onto 1024 aluminum after deburring. The logical choice would be a TimeSaver but the cost on those units is incredible! I'm looking into dual drum drum sanders like the grizzly linked below. I figured I could use 120g on the first drum followed by a ScotchBrite 7447 media on the second drum for deburring and finishing in one pass.

What I'm curious about is how well suited are wood-style drum sanders for metal finishing? Seems the SFM are pretty slow on them, so not sure why it would be a problem? Also, the Grizzly unit below states a 1/8" minimum board thickness but we would need it to go to around 0.0625" or so. Is this doable with a unit such as this? Is there a reason why people pursue a metal-specific machine beyond the added features (wet sanding) that those units facilitate?

24" 5 HP Drum Sander

<h1>G1066R 24" 5 HP Drum Sander</h1> <h2>Offers dual drum sanding to cut your work in half.</h2> <p>This efficient drum sander removes planer knife marks and glue lines after panel glue ups with consistent board thickness.</p> <p>Minimize sanding time - the 6" dual drums allow coarse and fine...

www.grizzly.com

 

[Fish On]

Hello All-

I have a production application where we need to impart a straight-grain finish onto 1024 aluminum after deburring. The logical choice would be a TimeSaver but the cost on those units is incredible! I'm looking into dual drum drum sanders like the grizzly linked below. I figured I could use 120g on the first drum followed by a ScotchBrite 7447 media on the second drum for deburring and finishing in one pass.

What I'm curious about is how well suited are wood-style drum sanders for metal finishing? Seems the SFM are pretty slow on them, so not sure why it would be a problem? Also, the Grizzly unit below states a 1/8" minimum board thickness but we would need it to go to around 0.0625" or so. Is this doable with a unit such as this? Is there a reason why people pursue a metal-specific machine beyond the added features (wet sanding) that those units facilitate?

24" 5 HP Drum Sander

<h1>G1066R 24" 5 HP Drum Sander</h1> <h2>Offers dual drum sanding to cut your work in half.</h2> <p>This efficient drum sander removes planer knife marks and glue lines after panel glue ups with consistent board thickness.</p> <p>Minimize sanding time - the 6" dual drums allow coarse and fine...

www.grizzly.com

I use a wood master 50" for that purpose. Single drum, but probably should have bought a dual. If you can find the right sanding media in roll form, it works adequately. Only real problem I've had is that a lot of the roll form scotchbrite type abrasives are thicker and less aggressive than the equivalent disc shaped versions of the 'same thing,' and you run into a situation where the abrasive hits the drive belt before the idler pinch rollers hit the material. But, that's an abrasive sourcing problem, not a machine problem. Otherwise, works great.

Only question would be what is 'production?' If this needs to run an 8 hour shift 5 days a week, I don't think these machines are adequate. Few hours here and there, no problem.

 

[xplodee]

I use a wood master 50" for that purpose. Single drum, but probably should have bought a dual. If you can find the right sanding media in roll form, it works adequately. Only real problem I've had is that a lot of the roll form scotchbrite type abrasives are thicker and less aggressive than the equivalent disc shaped versions of the 'same thing,' and you run into a situation where the abrasive hits the drive belt before the idler pinch rollers hit the material. But, that's an abrasive sourcing problem, not a machine problem. Otherwise, works great.

Only question would be what is 'production?' If this needs to run an 8 hour shift 5 days a week, I don't think these machines are adequate. Few hours here and there, no problem.

Thank you. We would be using it just a few hours a day at most. Probably less than six hours a week and always intermittently.
Aside from what you mentioned about the scotchbrite abrasive, I also worry about being able to offset the scotchbrite drum vertically relative to the sanding drum. I assume with a woodworkers setup both drum axes have to be upon the the same horizontal plane?

 

[Fish On]

Thank you. We would be using it just a few hours a day at most. Probably less than six hours a week and always intermittently.
Aside from what you mentioned about the scotchbrite abrasive, I also worry about being able to offset the scotchbrite drum vertically relative to the sanding drum. I assume with a woodworkers setup both drum axes have to be upon the the same horizontal plane?

Your amount of usage should be fine with that machine, at least the Wood master I have. Green bear company? No idea, but probably okay - there's nothing on my wood master that screams 'high quality' so probably equal.

That is a good question on the independent drum heights. Mine being a single drum, I don't have that answer, but I would guess they're not independently adjustable on the dual, so that might be a concern. Even in the woodworking world, these are not designed for stock removal - just smooth finishing, and the drums are slightly padded, so I don't see any reason why they would be independent.

 

[Fish On]

I just looked closer at the grizzly one - it looks near identical to a dual drum no name one I sold a buddy some years back (I never used it). The drums on are mounted with pillow block bearings on top of the frame, so the second drum could easily be shimmed.

The wood master has the flat 4 bolt style flange pillow blocks, so no easy shimming.

You'd need the wood master style Velcro sleeves to run the scotchbrite material - they're readily available from WM, and my buddy did use them on the one like that he had, so that should work.

 

[xplodee]

I just looked closer at the grizzly one - it looks near identical to a dual drum no name one I sold a buddy some years back (I never used it). The drums on are mounted with pillow block bearings on top of the frame, so the second drum could easily be shimmed.

The wood master has the flat 4 bolt style flange pillow blocks, so no easy shimming.

You'd need the wood master style Velcro sleeves to run the scotchbrite material - they're readily available from WM, and my buddy did use them on the one like that he had, so that should work.

I saw the pillow blocks and figured I could shim it. Sometimes its nice to just have another person agree haha. For the money and considering our duty cycle, I’m definitely headed down this path. I’d like to see one in person first but who knows if thats possible.

T

 

[Yankeejen]

I saw the pillow blocks and figured I could shim it. Sometimes its nice to just have another person agree haha. For the money and considering our duty cycle, I’m definitely headed down this path. I’d like to see one in person first but who knows if thats possible.

T

I’m curios to know how this worked out for you. I need to achieve a nice finish on 1/4” thick aluminum bar stock. A metal fabricator locally put it through a time saver and it is way too rough. It even pinched down the end of the bars. I’m trying to take things into my own hands. I have a Grizzly drum sander and I’m trying to decide if I can put scotchbrite on it and have it do what I need. Maybe put a reducer on it to slow the drum speed?

 

[xplodee]

I’m curios to know how this worked out for you. I need to achieve a nice finish on 1/4” thick aluminum bar stock. A metal fabricator locally put it through a time saver and it is way too rough. It even pinched down the end of the bars. I’m trying to take things into my own hands. I have a Grizzly drum sander and I’m trying to decide if I can put scotchbrite on it and have it do what I need. Maybe put a reducer on it to slow the drum speed?

If you already have the sander I'd say go for it. I checked out my buddy's grizzly single roller and it looked like it "could" work but required some grinding of the casting to fit the larger wheel diameter that would occur with the scotch bright belt. We didn't go any further. It was not an ideal solution though because of the lack of easy adjustment with these cheap sanders. Real metal finishing machines are expensive for a reason, but some of that reason is the fact that they are used in production environments and tinkering is not acceptable.