Vibratory tumbler

[Lykle]

OK, here it is, my simple little vibratory tumbler.

I started off with a car buffer by Kinzo. Took it all apart and found a 100 watt motor with an aluminium off center weight. I had some nice stainless steel channels that seemed to fit so I cut them to size and fit the motor inside, yep perfect shape. The motor had a shaft with M8 on the end, opposite of the counterweight. So I cut off the counterweight and now I can adjust the imbalance by adding or removing weight from the shaft, using a M8 locknut.

Mounted the stainless steel channels on a roughly square board and mounted a scooter tire on that. Screwed it down with a lot if screws around the bead. I trimmed off the other bead, this gave me a bigger opening at the top.

Glued and siliconed a sheet or rubber inside to cover it all up and now I have a nice rubber interior. I intend to put a central post in there and cover that with rubber as well, but have not done so yet as my old trusty Shopsmith has spit out it's speed control. My Dad bought this Shopsmith when we were in the States. That was 1957. It is almost as old as I am and it is still going strong (except for the speed control quadrant). I want to use it to turn a nice cone shape out of wood for the center pillar.

The stainless steel channels needed to be 8 cm off the base plate, to make room for the weights and shaft. So I mounted the whole thing on rubber silentblocks. I could only get 4cm high ones, so I doubled them, thinking that if the vibrations got too wild, I could always tune it by removing a block or two and replacing it with steel.
(These silentblocks cost me so much time. You would think they are easy to get, but nobody here on the island could tell me where I could buy them. I just could not get them here! It seems like such a simple thing. Eventually I ordered them via RS Components)

Next post, pictures!

Lykle

[Lykle]

 

OK and now for some pictures.

First an overview. As you can see, a tire mounted on a piece of wood.
And underneath is a motor inside some stainless steel channels.
With a variable counter weight.

Also included is a shot of the speed controller I found from and old juicer.

And finally a shot inside where you can see the bottom rubber glued into the tire with silicone and the top bead cut away for better access.

So far so good. But it is the tweaking of the thing that will make it really shine. To do that I need to do the following:

Find some abrasive material
Find a better way to control the speed
Check to see if I need a central post to get the material to rotate nicely.
Put some chunks of stainless steel in there and test away.

I will keep you posted.

Lykle

[Jonny]

Keep us posted on this.

I was after something just over 5yrs ago, even for a smaller industrial jobby the media cost a fortune and may have not worked. Then theres the task of repetitively changing media to finer grades and finding the parts out. Not to mention takes hours and hours with each media.
I wasnt sure at the time whether it would knock the edges off and open holes up.

Decided to do the old fashioned horrible way in the end.

[ChriX]

I guess it depends what you want to polish but I have always used this stuff in my tumbler (Berrys 400). http://www.zooplus.de/shop/nager_kleintiere/heu_streu/maisstreu/5614

I use it with Brasso for polishing screws and other small parts, they often come out with a mirror finish depending on how long they are left in there.