Tumbler Build - For cleaning plasma cut parts.

the one we have at work recirculates the water and has additives mixed in the water. i think the additives are something along the lines of anti foaming and rust inhibitors. the water keeps the media cutting better as well.

I did not know they used wet systems for tumbling. Ill look into it.

I based my design on these dry tumblers,

dross from plasma or laser is probably a different kind of animal for tumbler requirements. i would imagine you need something pretty violent to knock it loose after seeing a barrel full of huge ball bearing as media the wet tumblers are more of a finishing tumbler with abrasive stones for media.

3D model done,


Fab drawings done.



Time to get into it.

Nice.
I started ( and stopped ) learning Blender and FreeCAD just for doing such things, got to the point of having something that looked like a machine and had not time to mess with it any more. Gone are the days that i could do an animation in 1 to 2 hours and leave it rendering for two days, in 3DstudioMax.

Thats my problem with learning programming. Having the time to play around with it and learn the ins and outs.

A few years ago now my job was a full time draftsman.I learnt as many CAD programs as I could when I had the time.

Now when I need to design something, the first thing I do is model it. Saves sooo much time when you need to see how something looks before you go ahead and start making it. Its hard to say how much time you would save on a project like this by modeling it first but it is roughly about half the time. Just being able to try new things out without physically building something is in my opinion is priceless.

Well, i do all that in my head, so my head has grown quite big from all the mess going in there and most of it never getting out !

More progress.