Has anyone ever used a thumbler to polish small aluminum parts?

[Iprefer3]

I was wondering if anyone has knowledge on these things. There meant for cleaning and polishing brass (like gun casings). Cabelas has one for about $80. If it would work that would be killer to polish say a lever or a master cylinder just about anything small and aluminum. Thanks in adavance.

[jeswinehart]

112971112970112969112972Well, as a matter fact, yes. I built one for removing paint/rust/grease on all the nuts and bolts for my White Tecate build so I could have them nickle chromed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxXKCpXoxms
http://www.3wheelerworld.com/showthread.php?116098-Nuts-bolts-tumble-method-for-cleaning&highlight=
I up graded it some what for another board members project to put a little shine to his stainless steel parts. I used coated crushed walnut shells for that and worked quite well for no more time I had in them tumbling.
When I re-vamped the canister I aimed for it being water tight and I am 99% sure it is, but have not tried it out yet. There is some very good slurry mixtures that do a heck of a job deburring to polishing.
Yep, had to sacrifice the turkey deep fryer pot, but it was a good cause :)

[buck]

A tumbler or a thumbler? Never heard of a thumbler?

[Iprefer3]

a thumbler is one that vibrates the material rather than the conventional tumblers. Jeswinehart very impressive thanx for sharing that.

[jmax857]

can you get a 100% polished look from a tumbler? and what type of media would you use on aluminum to give a clean finish to start polishing?

[jeswinehart]

I am sure you could jules. I have done any alu (yet) just regular and stainless steel.
If you google up polishing media or several variations of you can see all the different stuff there is out there to shine stuff up.
Heck if rocks can be polished to a brilliant shine, I would think alu would be easy enough.

[fugget1]

If you use the same thumbler as you use for polishing brass ( I have a Dillon) and crushed Walnut Shells, you can add a rouge to it and polish anything. I have used it to take the bluing off of Aluminum gun parts, and to completely polish other small parts. No good on the pits and deep scraethches, but it will make it shine like chrome.

[skippy]

i have used a product called strip and etch from home depot/lowes to clean off bolts.. it removes oils and greases, and will take most bolt to a clean, dull finish, then you can either put them on a wheel or tumbler. HD sells it by the gallon for $15 in the paint section, if you have a ton of greasy bolts this is a cheap eash way to do it. just place them into a tupperware container for 2-4 hours, shake it up now and again, and the items will come out clean. again, they will be dull, but you can polish them if needed.

[jmax857]

I am sure you could jules. I have done any alu (yet) just regular and stainless steel.
If you google up polishing media or several variations of you can see all the different stuff there is out there to shine stuff up.
Heck if rocks can be polished to a brilliant shine, I would think alu would be easy enough.

wow jeswin, i didnt know we were on a first name basis!
i was thinking about building one tommorrow before i even read this thread. i have a rotisserie for the barbeque somewhere, i alkso have a dremel i might donate to power it.
i bought some media at harbour freight last week, its the hard stuff, the little green triangles. i was wondering how sandblastin sand would do in there. mostly i was looing just to do most of the work for me before polishing. i want a tumbler about the size of a 5 gallon pail. if i do build it, i will be sre to post pics.

[Iprefer3]

I think I'm going to buy the thumbler that cabellas has. It's $80 and worth a try. I'm going to try to polish a front brake master cylinder and see how it comes out.

[pantera1975]

How would one of them thumbler work for polishing my small part for the model pulling tractors I make. I have a machine shop CNC 6061 aluminum in to fuel tanks and wheels? We have talked about getting one instead of using a buffer wheel.

[fugget1]

Pantera, they work great. If you know anyone who reloads their own Ammunition Im sure they would let you try it out. Most people are pretty good that way, especially if they get to show off one of their toys. Sorry for the misspell on Tumbler, but my fingers dont work as good as my brains tells them to.

[jmax857]

okay so i tried making a tumbler with very little success. i seen that you used a rotisserie and i decided to go for that approach. it uses a powerful synchronous motor, but has a really low RPM. i figured with the low rpm, i would have to put it in for twice as long, but that didnt really work out. i used the grren triangles from harbour freight, the abrasive kind. anyway heres my original design
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/DSCF5011.jpg

heres a vid of it spinning
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/th_DSCF5012.jpg (http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/?action=view&current=DSCF5012.mp4)

parts before
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/DSCF5009.jpg

and after
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/DSCF5021.jpg

as you can see it didnt do a whole heck of alot, its just way too slow.
so next i fitted my tumbler with some very advanced, big gear to little gear technology,
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/DSCF5029.jpg

and heres a vid
http://i246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/th_DSCF5030.jpg (http://s246.photobucket.com/albums/gg114/jmax857/Stuff/?action=view&current=DSCF5030.mp4)

but even still im not 100% sure its spinning fast enough. im a beginner tumbler so forgive me for my noobness.

[atcmatt]

Do you put water in with the media or is the media like a liquid stuff?

[jmax857]

the stuff i used looked like this.
http://www.eastwood.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/6/p6854_1.jpg
i was wondering if using sandblasting sand would work. thers not alot of people that use tumblers for aluminum, theres alot of reloaders that use them for brass but brass is really easy to polish. it would be nice if someone had a guide to tumbling aluminum i have scoured the web and cant come up with a whole lot.

[jmax857]

the stuff i used looked like this.
http://www.eastwood.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/6/p6854_1.jpg
i was wondering if using sandblasting sand would work. thers not alot of people that use tumblers for aluminum, theres alot of reloaders that use them for brass but brass is really easy to polish. it would be nice if someone had a guide to tumbling aluminum i have scoured the web and cant come up with a whole lot.

[jeswinehart]

Judging by the gearing you have there it should be turning fast enough. Here are some of the things I found out while making mine for rust/paint/crud removal (required to prep for nickle chrome coating) and for polishing up the stainless parts for a buddy.
The container should be half full of the media you are using.
Don't over load the drum with lots of parts (don't look like you did)
It takes time, lots of time (but it is so easy). The stainless parts took about 20 hours using the walnut shells to give a nice chrome look (not mirror polish) from basically a really dull finish.
I think you are very well along with your set up, it looks good. You might not want to mix steel with alu parts though. I would think the steel parts would hammer the softer alu parts.
The 2 main reasons I upgrades my drum was for size and the other being so I did not have a rod like your running the length inside.
I could hear the stainless parts hitting the rod alot and when I up sized, that did not happen.
In fact by having the bigger drum actually slowed things down a bit inside to where ZI could envision the walnut shells and parts just sliding/tumbling up one side constantly and not falling back onto them selves which made it whole lot noisy and produced much better results.
When do the nuts and bolts and the sand blasting media, it was god awful noisy but I did not much care since I was metal coating them anyway.
With the stainless parts is when I realized they was beating the crap out of each other by the clanking noise.
I started off with a rotisserie motor but it was not enough and went to the fish scalier tumbler set up.
Keep at it, you will get it !
john

[jmax857]

why did you decide to go away from the rotissery motor? i myself think that it is much much too slow. on the first video, that speed was much much too slow. the parts i tumbled were in the coarse media for around 17 hours with little or no effect. the drum was approximately half full, although i should have took a picture. i never tried it with the second setup yet, the chain skips a little and i have to replace my bolts on either side with a more reliable solid rod. yesterday was basically my first attempt ever at tumbling. its trial and error i guess. i can see myself running into the problem of needing a different motor. the problem is that i dont want to dump a bunch of money into this, and second of all i dont want to burn my house down. i thought about using a 12v cordless drill and attaching it to a power source, but it would overheat waaay to fast. i thought about using a dremel and gearing it down, but they just dont have enough torque. the rotisserie uses a nice 120V synchrounous motor, which can spin both directions, and doesnt overheat. i just wish it would spin a little faster.
jeswin what motor is used in this video?
http://www.youtube.com/user/sistermaryMartini#p/u/1/DxXKCpXoxms
i thought that looked like a good speed and i was trying to replicate that, or is that a little too fast?