Last night an ad popped up for free stuff, cleaning out an estate a couple miles away. So I drug my bad back over there and came home with a bead blaster and this 'burnisher' (the orange thing), as the son of the deceased called it. It looked to me like I could pop some parts into it, along with the media, and fire it up. Anyone played with one of these?
Looks like a vibrating tumbler. Depending on the medium you put in it you can polish a number of things. Corn cob or walnut media is used on brass. Lots of info out there.
Definitely will need a cover. Eastwood sells the medium last I knew. Hope you did not lift those 5 gal buckets of blasting medium with that back of yours
Used to use those in one of the shops I worked in. Use to load it up with small steel or aluminum parts and ceramic media and let it run. Deburred and polished stuff up nicely.
Media can come in many different forms. There are ceramic stones, Needles, Ball bearings. There is also Vibratory liquid cleaners you can run with the media. They deburr parts or bring parts back to looking new as they burnish the material - steel, stainless , brass , copper you name it. Looks like just the right size for a work shop. A client of mine a long time ago was Clevite Bearing and they had dozens of huge 15 foot in diameter Tub Deburring Tumblers that ran thousands and thousnads of parts per day.
Didn't see a cover, going back today to get a sewing machine, hope it's there. He loaded my truck, I just have to figure out how to unload it before I return...open tailgate hole shot.. There is media in those buckets, and more still there. I did see a box of steel BBs.
That one doesn't look very big, so it would be great for smaller, cast parts, to polish before chroming. Or to just give aluminum a great finish.
A lot of small castings/parts are tumbled to remove sharp edges, pretty common in manufacturing, the buckets you show were vibrating with a media and the parts would come out and line up like little soldiers to move onto next step in assembly. I always enjoyed getting tours in shops especially with automated manufacturing saw, many trick items that I wondered who and how long did it take to trial and error that to make it happen, all this before computer aided design, the Tool & Die Maker ( my trade )with train driver's ideas made all this stuff, so different from today's world.
Hmmmm. If he was using the vibrating tumbler as a "burnisher", might he have been using the blast cabinet as a shot blaster, using the steel BB's as media? You might want to take a good look at the blasting gun. Roger
"Tumblers" are on a horizontal axis. This looks more like a standard vibratory bowl as car nut has stated. - EM
I use mine for small carb parts and the like. I bought real fine sand from a pet store used for reptile enclosures
Went back last night, got more abrasives, and a 100lb. box of steel balls. Maybe some is for the blaster The son said his dad was into rocks and jewelry. Doesn't look like he got far with it. Didn't find a lid, may have to sacrifice the top to my Webber. Looking forward to testing it out, stay tuned..
Had a bit of time to play with this today. Dumped the grey abrasive and an old Amal leaker in there, check it out. Funny how it swallows it up. Coming out clean so far.. more to follow. Before
Great score on the vib bowl. There may be a drain on the bowl, and you can screen the drain with some stainless of some sort and run a small liquid pump with flow regulator with water and a soap or antirust to help clean and polish. Some parts do better dry than wet and there are many different forms and sizes of media. Works best with constant clean solution drained to waste. You can cover bowl to reduce noise or keep dust/dirt out if you like. Popular with rock hounds (lapidary), and shell reloaders. Your nuts, bolts, fastners and small tools will take on a new life. Might want to add an programable timer to power line.
Thanks, 1320, good info. Yes there is a drain hole, haven't checked it out yet. And I have at least two other abrasives, the white ones I think said plastic, they don't feel like plastic. Maybe they are for plastic? Also some finer stuff, including glass beads and that big 20 gallon barrel above, but I think they are for the blast cabinet. And a 100 pound box of steel balls that I keep having to move. I'll be playing with it more soon. It's actually pretty quiet and doesn't seem to need a top while it's going. Nice to finally have something working for me while I work, and likely getting more done.
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