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Ceramic polishing a wheel.
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Previously:
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...475#post185603
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...165#post145609
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...900#post171488
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...637#post163003
https://www.homemadetools.net/forum/...457#post166324
Using ultrasonics ? Certainly works anyway!
Probably more like rock tumbling, with various steps of polishing media...and lots of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCMPI1g1-Nc
I would be happy with the finish after the first round with the course media.
Nice but I will bet it took a lot longer than that.
I have used vibratory tumblers at places I worked before. We mainly used them for deburring machined parts. They work really well. Each grit of polishing media takes hours to do what the guy in the video did. The good part is you can just let it run while you're doing something else.
I didn't want to spend the money for one of those for my home shop ($2500-$4000), although I may get one at some point. I got a $300 cement mixer with poly tub and use that with the coarse ceramic media and a small amount of Dawn dishwashing liquid. The Dawn helps keep the media from loading up with metal particles. It does a pretty good job, but takes longer. The finish with the coarse media is similar to a very fine zinc coating look.
did you take the paddles out of the mixer?
Yes, they were metal. I made some 3" tall plastic ones to replace them.
I wonder about work hardening with this process. I made a batch of mounting tabs out of 16 gauge aluminum sheet and decided to run them through my cheap ceramic polisher to clean them up. They all came out with a nice finish, but they were also very brittle from work hardening. Still, surface hardening shouldn't hurt those wheels (and might actually protect them), while it could penetrate all the way through my thinner stock.
I have never had work hardening with my parts. They are either 6061-T6, 2024-T3, or 7075. Maybe you had a different alloy?
I'm almost positive I was using 6061, but I don't know if it was annealed or not. It definitely work hardened, though. I'm guessing it was so bad because of the relatively thin material, and I may have left it in the polisher too long. But it never dawned on me that might be a problem until it was.Quote:
Originally Posted by Toolguy