Tumbling 101 - HF 18 Pounder

[middle.road]

Need some suggestions for alternate media. What are others using?

I snagged two of them at auction this summer.
They were setup for 'wet' use - not sure what media they were using.
I of course went with the green rust removing media from HF.
(Which by the way they no longer apply a discount to since it has 'Central Machinery' on the label. )
Had a small crack in the tub so I sealed that with epoxy and it's holding - so far.
The cool set of gage blocks scored at another auction need corrosion removal so I decided to run them through the tumbler.
Ran them through in groups of three so as not to bang them around too much.
I've got the tumblers in the front of the storage trailer due to the noise factor.
I put the first batch in added a bit of water (possible mistake) and let it run.
Then I fell under the weather and forgot that they were tumbling. A day and half later I remembered.
Well, the 'dust' from the green pyramids turns into a sludge that resembles brick mortar. Quite gunky.
Dumped them, rinsed them. and continued.
I scored two buckets of ceramic media at the auction, I'll have to get some picts today and post them later.
I've run the ceramic in the other tumbler -dry, and it doesn't seem to do much.

Before:

After:
Need to go back over them and brush out the gunk in the stamped numbers.

As bought:
And there is a controller box setup with a programmable timer and GFCI power.

 

[vocatexas]

I'd be a bit worried about wear on something as precision as gauge blocks. Have you tried cleaning them in Evaporust? Just the act of removing the rust is going to take a small amount of material off the surface. There may not be enough difference in the two processes to make a difference. I've never tumbled blocks, so I don't know for sure.

 

[JimDawson]

I have the same machine. We normally use the gray ceramic triangles for our deburring operations. We run a continuous trickle of water when running. But for rust removal the green triangles seem to work well, run wet.

You can also use ground walnut shells for polishing, run dry.

I would hesitate to use this on gauge blocks in any case.

 

[middle.road]

I'm using the term 'gage' kinda liberally. They are stamped 'fractional', blocks mfg'd by LITEDIE.
Searching didn't turn up anything - yet.
They measured a tenth or two over nominal before tumbling. They're still at those dimensions.
No major lost of accuracy - at least for hobby use. Perhaps if I had measured them in a met lab beforehand.
Since there are (25) blocks, (150) faces, I was being lazy and didn't want to 'clean' each face.
The tumbling took off the tough grime, corrosion and stains that were on them pretty well.
Perhaps when I get some spare time I'll check them out on the surface plate against known good blocks.

...

 

[middle.road]

I have the same machine. We normally use the gray ceramic triangles for our deburring operations. We run a continuous trickle of water when running. But for rust removal the green triangles seem to work well, run wet.

You can also use ground walnut shells for polishing, run dry.

I would hesitate to use this on gauge blocks in any case.

So running them wet is OK, cool... I was betting that I'd messed up.
Going to have to rig up a water 'trickler' and a drain now.
Did you see the sump pumps that are in the buckets that they were using?
That gray 'mortar' that occurs is something else. Gets all over everything no matter how hard you try to keep it contained.

 

[JimDawson]

We just use a flow through system. Trickel it in and let just drain out, keeps about 2 or so inches of fresh water in the bottom and flushes out the crud.