[TheForge] Re: Cleaning components

[Mike Spencer]

> I got the idea from a conference to build a tumbler. 
> ....
> ...buy a piece of 24 to 30 inch diameter pipe,...

Your tumbler container either has to be (more or less) square or you
have to put vanes or the equivalent inside.  Look inside a cement
mixer, which has the same problem: your stuff will otherwise mostly
just slide down the side as the drum turns and not tumble.

The Lunbuerg Foundry had a tumbler for iron castings.  It was a
rectangular steel plate box about 4' long by 3'x3' (perhaps a bit
bigger than that -- I forget) with a ca. 18" square, dogged-down hatch
on one side.  They used chunks of cast iron sprue and other scrap plus
some 1' or 2' lengths of 2x4 as media.  It turned, IIRC, 40 or so RPM
-- somewhat less than 1 rev per second.

Made an unholy racket but cleaned the sand, flash and burrs off my
firepot very nicely.  Must have had a hefty motor because half a cubic
yard or so of cast iron is quite a load.


- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^