HF vibratory tumbler, what the secret?

The green ceramic pyramids work great for me, with a little simple green to kill the grease.

I just leave them in there overnight quite often and check them in the morning.

Still no luck even with the glass bead. The bolts are cleaner but there is still rust on the heads of the bolts and nuts.

I know if I hit these with the media cabinet they will be bare metal within seconds, ready to paint or plate.

I'm going to try a few more things but it looks like this isn't going to clean hardware that wont require additional blasting in the cabinet. So basically worthless to me.

How far are you filling the bowl? The 5lb capacity is both media and parts.

About halfway up the side, maybe a little more. Too full and the motor can't move it enough.

In reply to Jumper K. Balls:

A little more then halfway up the sides, with about 15 parts - small washers, nuts and a few bolts about 2" long.

Update:

I ran the tumbler this weekend for about 8 hours with some metal rescue and the green pyramid media. The bolts came out pretty clean but still some rust that had to be removed before plating.

I then took the same amount of bolts and put them in my media blaster and had everything clean ready to plate in about 15 minutes.

I thought the tumbler would clean the rust and leave a baremetal bolt... doesn't seem like thats the case.

The time in the tumbler I can deal with the results however don't justify the purchase.

I open to more suggestions for media and liquid to try.

Like I said earlier. It takes at least 24 hours for the larger, more powerful tumbler to do the task. The smaller unit could take up to two days.

Jumper K. Balls wrote: Like I said earlier. It takes at least 24 hours for the larger, more powerful tumbler to do the task. The smaller unit could take up to two days.

Really? I missed that, for some reason I was thinking 8 hours would do it, I'll try it again. Also what are you using to keep the lid on. The wing nut I have eventually spins loose. Thanks for the help.

I use a rubber washer.

In reply to obrut:

I use double nuts to keep mine in place.

and yeah it takes a while to get it completely clean. 2 days sounds about right, but the finish is better, IMO than media blasting which makes threaded fasteners less likely to false torque during assembly.

Now that I think about it, I think the instructions say 8-12 hrs minimum. Unfortunately, my ex- (who's house I was working in for her car) had a mental image of her electric meter spinning and said "NFW!" Never mind I (being someone who does building electrical design for a living including power cost estimates) could look at the power consumption and her electric bill and tell her how much it cost to run... she still nixed it.

Whatever... maybe I'll break it out when I have a shop and start working on my ES...