Vibratory polishers

Reply to
Bradford Chaucer
Loading thread data ...

I'm currently in the market for a vibratory polisher, both for polishing parts and for cleaning fired brass prior to reloading. There doesn't seem to be a huge difference between the ones sold by ammunition reloading suppliers and various metalworking suppliers, with one notable exception:

formatting link
That's the "high capacity" tumbler from Eastwood. A whopping 22 inch diameter bowl, large enough to polish even the dirtiest of small children to a high gloss shine. It's expensive, but it seems like the typical sizes of polishers are only good for objects small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I can easily see myself wanting to polish parts that are closer to a "palms of two hands" size, plus for reloading purposes I'd mainly be doing rifle brass so the additional capacity would allow me to get everything done in one big batch.

Has anyone ever used this particular tumbler? Can anyone speak to the quality and reliability of the unit? It's supposedly made in the USA, which is a plus as when Eastwood sells things that are made in China they end up being roughly equivalent to what you get from Harbor Freight. Also, does anyone know of other companies that sell tumblers in that same size category for comparison? It seems like every place I check doesn't get anywhere near the size of that one. It's a pretty huge chunk of change to plunk down, so I definitely need to do some comparison shopping first.

Reply to
The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Sorry...mine is 36" across and cost $25

Uses a 1/2hp motor.

You do know yuc can build such a ting rather easily, no?

Gunner

"Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with minimum food or water,in austere conditions, day and night. The only thing clean on him is his weapon. He doesn't worry about what workout to do--- his rucksack weighs what it weighs, and he runs until the enemy stops chasing him. The True Believer doesn't care 'how hard it is'; he knows he either wins or he dies. He doesn't go home at 1700; he is home. He knows only the 'Cause.' Now, who wants to quit?"

NCOIC of the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course in a welcome speech to new SF candidates

Reply to
Gunner Asch

I have heard that, but it would require me to have both the time available to make one, and the knowledge required to make one that worked properly. It doesn't sound like a complicated contraption to design and build, but I really just don't have the time. I suppose if I could find a set of plans and a list of materials that would yield a tumbler guaranteed to operate to my satisfaction then I'd be able to manage it, but it's the trial-and-error part of the design that makes it infeasible.

Reply to
The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Bryan,

Somewhere on the web I have seen a ball mill (not vibratory) made from a truck tire, and used to polish stones. (Can't find it right now.) If memory serves the tire sits on a couple of rollers, one of which is attached to a fractional HP motor.

Ha! Just found it!

formatting link
This one uses a 31" tire but you could probably make one with as large a tire as you can haul. The tire company will be amused when you bring back a tire worn out from the inside...

Best -- Terry

Reply to
Terry

Nice design! I suppose that instead of a slurry I could run plastic media to clean up small metal parts?

Ivan Vegvary

Reply to
Ivan Vegvary

Harbor Freight, yo, at < 1/3 the price!!

Their larger HF model (which I have) looks exactly like the one in the photo, except it may be even larger. Whole unit is about $150, about the price of Eastwoods bowl alone!!!

My buddy, who tumbles shit all the time in high-powered tumblers, uses my HF for his little bitty parts, says it works just fine. He especially likes it cuz it is so quiet.

HF also sells a smaller version of this, for like $50, which, if I ever start tumbling anything, I'll proly get also.

If you wind up buying any of these, email me, as I have a very simple mod for making the top a lot easier to screw on/off -- if you even bother. Basically just bushings on top AND bottom of the lid, so's you don't have to turn the nut 50 zillion times, OR crush the lid.

The HF model has two 1/8 or 1/4" nipples, for a water inlet, and drain, for media that should be used wet.

Seems decently made -- nothing that offends me immediately, at any rate.

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

The largest one I can find from Harbor Freight only has a 10 1/2" diameter bowl and an 18 pound capacity; the Eastwood one is 22" wide with a 50 pound capacity. It looks like the Eastwood one could actually fit the Harbor Freight one inside it. Believe me, I checked Harbor Freight first. Finding a tumbler as large as the Eastwood one is proving to be rather difficult. I just don't relish the idea of spending $550 on the thing.

Reply to
The Hurdy Gurdy Man

Well, look carefully: The *mouth* of the HF is 10.5", but the widest bowl diameter is considerably more, altho I can't measure it for you as it's at my buddy's place. It may not be 22", it's proly 16-18", judging from the picture.

However, judging from Eastwood's picture relative to the hands in the picture, and how my hands look on the HF, they look *very* similar, altho the mouth of the Eastwood looks bigger.

As far as whether it's 18 lb or 50 lb or whatever, I suppose a mfr could say anything, but it seems to me like the HF can do quite a bit more than 18 lbs.

If these people would just give a g-d *volume* to the bowl, there'd be no ambiguity. There's also no motor rating to compare, which would give a better idea of just how much weight the motor could handle, at least relatively.

Looking at both bases, the HF looks like it at least has more room for a bigger motor.

Mebbe get two HFs? :)

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

cx?mTÛnÛ0 }ÏW°@Ñm@ê&ÙlKÑ?%»»=Ë2i?EO¢?º_?ZN?¸í?A[äáá9?-µCP¬/?ÈÁ*ÜT¹Ã%?Êá¦W¯Á?Ñwô e  ª>mBmÈckP59ÚØL??PÙktÎúMÌF_=Ì&?w??ùåôÍ~?U JÏÏBâÂñ"­òwRÓÜg{?¦ª 1?àbà Øb|?º¶7éõâoC¼øHs?s-ü²äcq{?'è?_JËZñ]ã©fòÒ3|{}eo??qJY©Ëh?vcx -Aq?N±?T«ñììqí,ßp*lDéÕ**ÐÁ?±??-¯Àm#à½Ò,39»ÅÔC¿RøWì`¡?÷kËP©r??´Ë~ë/ç6??a8?Î'ãCü

Reply to
Ignoramus12712

Have you ever seen the Blue Press catalog? They offer one for cleaning cartridge cases for $179.95 (12-1/2 quart bowl capacity), and a smaller one for $129.95 (half that size).

I have no idea how that compares to the dimensions of the ones which you are looking at -- they are specified in different units.

But -- you can check them out at (and probably have to do a bit of searching to find the vibratory case cleaners. (They're on page 18 of the current monthly catalog, if that is any help.)

Good Luck, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

The larger HF tumbler is only available in their stores, and is not on their web site. I purchased the large one a month ago for the larger parts of a Lauson engines restoration. Still haven't figured out how to make parts shiny, but I can remove rust and paint. I also owned the smaller one from HF, the motor overheats, I believe winding failure. but I believe this is a random failure. Just bought a new one of these, they have made design improvements. ignator

Reply to
ignator

wants to quit?"

speech to new SF candidates

Gunner what did you use for a bowl? Wish I could see your machine, as to how you made it. ignator

Reply to
ignator

formatting link
If searching their site, it does not show up under "tumbler", but under "vibratory".

Harbor Freight can be a part time job, esp. if you try to catch all their price fluctuations. Really maddening, and altho you can be somewhat successful at chasing the low price, your net gain is proly equiv. to about

50c/hr for your time. What a racket..... goodgawd....

But more to the point:

You should be careful about how large a part you place in these types of tumblers, as the wave motion is converging to a point radially, for a lot of crowding, part-to-part collisions, and bottlenecking, possibly resulting in no net vibration due to compacting near the center.

I would guestimate that a 1" cube might be the max size for these types/size of tumblers. We use them for much smaller stuff, like dremel-type arbors, small standoffs, etc.

Also, your choice of media is of course important, but I suspect your larger parts are not getting shiney because of the above size/geometry problems.

The other type we heave is a rectangular tub-type, where the tub has a rounded bottom but is rectangular in x,y, and thus does not suffer from this type of "geometrical blockage/bottleneck".

It will tumble *anything* that can fit in the approx 10" x 18" area of the tub -- about 18" deep, altho you only fill it about 1/2 full of media/parts.

Thus, the tub volume is not super-huge, but can accommodate a few good-sized parts, and is very powerful -- and maddeningly noisy. It requires *at least* a 1/2 hp motor (burned out several 1/3 hp motors), that runs a large eccentric weight -- proly hell on the front motor bearing.

If this type is being used anywhere near people, you really need to isolate it off the floor with hvac-type vibration dampers AND enclose it.

If Ig's tumbler is like this, you may want to consider it.

If the tub is metal, they need occasional re-lining, which done here locally (NYC) was almost $500 by itself, altho I think we got ripped off.

Next time, I will try to apply this smear-on bedliner type stuff for pickup trucks, see how that works. Or some other epoxy-type stuff.

Or mebbe even just heat up the tub and try to melt/form a 1/8" nylon or delrin sheet, altho that is proly a lot easier said than done -- and risky, from a longterm moisture/rusting pov.

Reply to
Proctologically Violated©®

...

That bluepress link resolves to , while google on vibratory case cleaner "Blue Press" gives a link

with pictures of CV-2001 and CV-750 that appear to be those two cleaners at those prices.

Reply to
James Waldby

I bought a Nova 1001, 1 cuft with a 1/2HP motor from these guys. made locally in PA

formatting link
Was about $1000.00 paid for itself by me not having to send parts out for deburr. I'm using the plastic media for deburing aluminum parts.

Thank You, Randy

Remove 333 from email address to reply.

Reply to
Randy

Given the variability of hand sizes, I would think a better point of comparison would be the master cylinder floating around inside the Eastwood tumbler bowl. I've seen the large tumblers at Harbor Freight and they just don't look like they're as large; I'll see if I can find one at the local store today and check again.

I do worry about the power of the motor in the Eastwood unit. I have to suspect, because I'm paranoid about everything, that it'll be underpowered. Especially since they don't mention the power anywhere on the site. I'll have to see if I can get them to tell me. I've had bad luck with Eastwood in the past when I've tried to ask them questions.

Reply to
The Hurdy Gurdy Man

I've looked at those, and as far as I can tell they're smaller. They look like they might be better quality, but the bowls don't seem to be quite as large. One of the ways I came across the Eastwood tumbler was from a conversation with someone who reloaded 50BMG rounds. They had the largest of tumblers available through any of the reloading outlets, and they felt it still wasn't large enough. The Eastwood one looks to rectify that problem. It is a pain that companies won't give the volume specs in equal units of measure, but they do seem to frequently give the largest diameter of the bowl. Since they're all round, and generally doughnut shaped, it seems fair to compare them based on that measurement. Even when the diameter given is the size of the opening and not that of the widest part of the bowl it seems like it's still a fair way to do it, since the difference between the opening and the sides rarely seems to be so different as to create a real calculation problem. Besides, if the opening is that much different than the sides of the bowl, how is that good design? It still restricts the size of the parts I can get into it.

There are some good sized ones available through Rio Grande (some are listed as 20" with around a 6 gallon capacity), but of course they carry the Rio Grande price tags. Truthfully, as Gunner as suggested, the best option for me as I want one that's both large and cheap is to build my own, but I just don't know what the hell I'm doing enough to build one without some sort of plans or more solid background with the devices.

Reply to
The Hurdy Gurdy Man

On May 15, 8:50=A0pm, The Hurdy Gurdy Man

If you want I will ask my neighbor about his vibratory tumbler. I did not note who the manufacturer was and have no idea of what it cost. It is fairly large. Maybe 4 feet across. He cleans alternator cases in it.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Yes -- those were what I was looking at in the catalog. Thanks for digging out the links.

Enjoy, DoN.

Reply to
DoN. Nichols

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.