What's new
What's new

Teach me about tumblers.....

I found that the following did not work at all:
Cement mixers
Buckets in lathe chucks
natural stone of all kinds
Sand mixed with stone
Shop built rotary tumblers
Solvents (they work but they make a difficult to dispose of waste)
soaps
filters for dust
dry tumbling
mill coolant or soluble oil (rage inducing suggestion, imagine all your parts with the dirt glued to them).

These are just malicious jokes. Roughly like sending the new guy to get some item that does not exist. Except you will spend weeks trying to figure out how to make it work. Suggesting a cement mixer as a tumbler should get you banned for a week.. Honestly you are better off trying to convert a drill press to a CNC mill than a cement mixer into a deburring machine.


What I have found to work well for steel parts.
Larger tumblers starting at about 1.25 cu ft and 150 lbs of media and parts. I like my KVF3 which is a 3.5 cu ft with a 500 lb capacity.
Cycle time for decent smoothing of clean laser cut parts is around 120 minutes on the KVF3, my old shoptuff 1.25 took about 90 minutes but was significantly louder and held less, so slower is faster.. Hairy saw burrs on small parts like little milled 1"x1" parts that are cut on a little bandsaw and have a fairly thick rolled over edge, we found that the edges of the part start getting rounded over too much before the burr was 90% gone, so we do a quick bump on a 120 grit sanding belt and then tumble, since they are getting tumbled there is no concern about being neat with the sander.

Using a tumbler to fix large burrs or big slag drips from a laser or plasma cutter normally is just a frustrating experience since it takes 8+ hours to knock them off. I my shop the goal is to have the parts as smooth and clean as possible before tumbling, the tumbler just smooths the edges, nothing more.

Flow through liquid compound.
Currently using vibrafinish VF-100 with VF-RI-8B rust inhibitor. Also dipping in a heavier mix of RI mix.

Ceramic media. I like the DF type on steel because it is brown and the parts are silver/gray so they are easy to see. Recently I got a batch of UFX and it is sadly a light gray which makes it hard to see parts trying to sneak away.

Zip ties or plastic bolts are another one that can work. I mostly do laser cut parts so I just accept a less than perfectly even finish, my stuff gets nitride finished anyway so most of the time they either acid wash or shot blast, so the finish is normally good anyway.
 
My rotary tumbler runs steel cages that are about a 12" square, 8 inches deep. They have perf on 2 sides and solid on the other 2. 2 round rings are welded to the square so it rolls nice. One side opens up with an overcenter clamp to load and unload. When running, the bottom of the baskets dip into the solvent sump about 1" is all.

Never seen another one like it. Built by EMC in california model T2 it says. It was used by a saw chain shop to clean up rusted saw chains for sharpening.
 
I found that the following did not work at all:
Cement mixers
Buckets in lathe chucks
natural stone of all kinds
Sand mixed with stone
Shop built rotary tumblers
Solvents (they work but they make a difficult to dispose of waste)
soaps
filters for dust
dry tumbling
mill coolant or soluble oil (rage inducing suggestion, imagine all your parts with the dirt glued to them).

These are just malicious jokes. Roughly like sending the new guy to get some item that does not exist. Except you will spend weeks trying to figure out how to make it work. Suggesting a cement mixer as a tumbler should get you banned for a week.. Honestly you are better off trying to convert a drill press to a CNC mill than a cement mixer into a deburring machine.


What I have found to work well for steel parts.
Larger tumblers starting at about 1.25 cu ft and 150 lbs of media and parts. I like my KVF3 which is a 3.5 cu ft with a 500 lb capacity.

Flow through liquid compound.
Currently using vibrafinish VF-100 with VF-RI-8B rust inhibitor. Also dipping in a heavier mix of RI mix.

Ceramic media. I like the DF type on steel because it is brown and the parts are silver/gray so they are easy to see. Recently I got a batch of UFX and it is sadly a light gray which makes it hard to see parts trying to sneak away.

Zip ties or plastic bolts are another one that can work. I mostly do laser cut parts so I just accept a less than perfectly even finish, my stuff gets nitride finished anyway so most of the time they either acid wash or shot blast, so the finish is normally good anyway.

Cost ?.....
 
I sold a huge vibe tumbler to a shop that used cement mixers for steel parts. Guy said they worked well all things considered.
 
Cost ?.....



I paid $4200 for my KVF3 from sierra victor in port orange FL which is local to me. I did not shop around much because I got a call in the last week of december than my $40K+ laser machine would arrive in January, so I needed to spend some money kinda quick.. my smaller shoptuff was around $650 when I bought it 8 years ago. Looks like they are $850 now. It worked fairly well, we just outgrew it. The quality is not super high on the shoptuff and it needs a inlet poked in for flow through compound, but I figure a machine shop knows how to use a cordless drill.

A lot of people like the MR.deburr machines. I wanted the KI KVF3 because it is in a cabinet which helps with sound and it's fully guarded which I like, so the extra $1200 was not a big deal to me.

I buy my compounds and media from CMtopline.com, I think they supply samples, but I've never asked.


I sold a huge vibe tumbler to a shop that used cement mixers for steel parts. Guy said they worked well all things considered.


I thought our cement mixer was working ok until I finally paid for a real tumbler. Then I realized how bad it actually was.
I was less blown away switching from a series 1 bridgeport to a Haas CNC.. Even the small POS shoptuff that is slightly more expensive than a cement mixer is easily 10X better than a cement mixer.
 
I paid $4200 for my KVF3 from sierra victor in port orange FL which is local to me.


Even the small POS shoptuff that is slightly more expensive than a cement mixer is easily 10X better than a cement mixer.

While I realize this is a professional site, and normally I wouldn't be for a "Harry Homeshop" kluge.

In this case, for the OP, and the work (qty's, sizes, materials, etc.) he does, and not wanting to dive into that much money, hence I recommended the HF mini cement mixer.
 
The OP has a .66 cu ft tumbler already looks like they sell new for $900+ so I bet it's a nice one. He was asking about how to keep parts from sticking.. Not sure how the cement mixer talk started. Looks like you started it basically out of the blue.

I'm stating that it is terrible advice and should not be recommend.. back right or nine years ago I came to this site and a few others and got the suggestions to use rock and sand in a cement mixer with mill coolant. I can confirm that advice cost me days and over $1000 in damaged parts and lost time.. and I still ended up spending the money on a real tumbler and then wasting more money before finally getting good advice from a salesman for tumblers compounds and media. My current setup works reliably.

Bad suggestions are not helpful. Don't assume everyone is trying to get the cheapest setup possible.
 
I tumbled 150 small 4130 machined parts today. I let it run three hours and am very pleased with the results using the higher water level. the parts came out looking great with no sticking together. Now I have no idea when I will need it again and I don't like the idea of leaving the water in it. I'll dump the media in a screen bucket, rinse it off and spread it out to dry and clean out the tub. I am happy with how the parts turned out, thanks to all who helped.
 
The OP has a .66 cu ft tumbler already looks like they sell new for $900+ so I bet it's a nice one. He was asking about how to keep parts from sticking.. Not sure how the cement mixer talk started. Looks like you started it basically out of the blue.

I'm stating that it is terrible advice and should not be recommend.. back right or nine years ago I came to this site and a few others and got the suggestions to use rock and sand in a cement mixer with mill coolant. I can confirm that advice cost me days and over $1000 in damaged parts and lost time.. and I still ended up spending the money on a real tumbler and then wasting more money before finally getting good advice from a salesman for tumblers compounds and media. My current setup works reliably.

Bad suggestions are not helpful. Don't assume everyone is trying to get the cheapest setup possible.

Bad recommendation sir ?

I actually DOO what I recommended.

You ? Like to spend other people money.....:ack2:
 
One thing we do to cut down/prevent parts sticking together is put plastic dividers in the tank. We will drill out the dividers like a pasta strainer with the correct size hole for the screw we are using, then fill those holes cap head screws just longer then the plastic thickness. One side the head of the screw protrudes, the other side the threads

The parts hit these protrusions and break apart the "stick" in most cases.

Tumbling for us is an ongoing learning experience because parts and issues associated with them are ever changing.
 
Glad to hear you got it working, Moonlight. I've been considering picking up one of these units to deburr steel parts as well.

What media are you using? The parts are about a 1.3in cube with many small facets

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk
 
Glad to hear you got it working, Moonlight. I've been considering picking up one of these units to deburr steel parts as well.

What media are you using? The parts are about a 1.3in cube with many small facets

Sent from my SM-G930R4 using Tapatalk

Now I am not sure, my helper threw the box away! The media is triangles about 1/2" on a side, 1/8" thick ceramic.
 
I find 2 hours is sufficient to remove burrs on my aluminium parts, and then 2 hours to polish. Took quite a while to dial in the water flow, too much water and nothing happens seems to just slosh around. Had major issues with additives leaving a waxy deposit eventually just settled on flow through water.
 








 
Back
Top