Vibratory polisher

Has anyone used a vibratory polisher for carbon steel? Can you provide me with some insight on your process? 

Yup, I've done it.  Here's my set-up:

It's a Raytech TD-75 and I bought it used for maybe $600.  It's big, and holds about 5 gal of media.  It's a workhorse, though I pretty much constantly have to fix something on it.  I think that's the nature of vib finishing.

I have both coarse and fine media for deburring and smoothing, and then I have polishing media.  The two kinds of cutting media use different shapes.  This triangular stuff is the coarse and is meant to put a lot of surface area against the parts.  My fine stuff is cylindrical and will get into holes and smooth there.  It will also jam in holes, which is annoying.

The polishing media are little spheres that don't cut at all.  Just burnish.  They work very well on steel, and reasonably well on aluminum.

I use two different concentrated liquids.  These get diluted - about a yogurt-cup's-worth to five gallons.   My pump then circulates this liquid at not much more than a steady drip.  Very much flow rate and it will froth and make a huge mess.  One liquid for cutting, a different one for polishing.  If you don't use a liquid, the parts will rapidly get nasty and the media will get clogged.

These motor mount parts were tumbled.  This is after plasma cutting, and with the slag removed.

I don't have a picture of just the tumbled parts, but here's the finished product.  It does a really nice job removing rough edges and the hot-rolled mill scale.  I'd usually run parts like this overnight.

I'm pretty sure I just ran the deburring media on these, and not the polishing.  But I might be wrong.

Generally speaking:

Vib media is not cheap, and you really want to fill the machine to the right load or it doesn't work right.

Use the right detergent.  It's also not cheap and it comes in huge jugs that will last you forever.

It's really loud.  I can hear mine from the back door of my house with the detached garage all closed up.  You can't really work around them with out good ear-muffs.

They really work well once dialed in.

If you were to place knob in there, would everyone be satisfied? 

In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks, good info. How much liquid is actually in the polisher at one time? I've seen ones filled with liquid to above the media, and then what I assume is just a drip feed going through the media.

Also what is the proper media volume. I have seen ratios but I don't know if they are talking by volume or by weight? I assume that too much media is better than too little?

In reply to D2W :

The actual volume of liquid in mine is pretty low.  A cup or two.  Mine is a flow-thru design, so the liquid is wetting the media and washing away the metal dust.  Total volume on my system is about 4 gal.

I guess you could add a lot of liquid and not have it circulate, but that tends to foam really bad.  Also, the removed material settles in my liquid tank.  If it stays in the vibe unit it tends to cake on the parts and media instead.

I would try to fill the vibe about 3/4 full with media.  There's a balance and flow going on, and if you don't have enough media the polisher won't work right.  Better to have the right amount of media and then vary your part load.  Usually the manufacturer will tell you the capacity.

In reply to TVR Scott (Forum Supporter) :

Thanks again, My vibrator is much smaller than yours without the drip through option so I will experiment with liquid level and see how things go.

I'm sorry, I couldn't figure out a way to say that without it sounding dirty.