Tumble polishing

Jul 27, 2009 4 Replies

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010 010 16 years ago

I'm curious about anyone who has experience with LARGE tumbling operations.

We have a large volume (perhaps up to several tons a day) of oblong ceramic balls that we would like to make more round. Yes, no metal is involved but I've heard more about tumble polishing with ball bearings and things rather than ceramics.

Would tumbling with, say, SiC or other abrasive particles accomplish this reasonably efficiently. Is there a better process for very large volumes?

Any good books or sources on the principals of tumbling that i should read?

thanks

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Buerste 16 years ago

I have a 10hp 6' x 4' tumbler that we polish wood blocks with. I don't think that tumbling will change your shape much, just smooth and polish.

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charlie 16 years ago

it might round off edges a bit, but it won't make them round if they are not already almost there.

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James Waldby 16 years ago

...

To the OP -- how large are these ceramic balls, and how eccentric is the oblong shape? By "more round", do you mean more spherical?

If these balls are a couple inches or less across, and off by less than a mm or so, buy or make a bunch of marble mills, as shown eg at

Or you might be able to set up a ball grinding pipeline using a modified form of the cast iron rollers shown at 1:00 - 1:30 in

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010 010 16 years ago

the balls are only 5-6 mm.

Actually, though they are friable before curing, they can be cured after they are made spherical, so the cast iron rollers in the video could work very well. The other type of marble mill would be a huge pain if processing millions of balls a day as we are.

great suggestions, thanks.

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