Steel polishing service?

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Elleth
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Steel polishing service?

Post by Elleth »

Shapeways steel stuff is awesome, and *can* eventually be polished down to a nice smooth surface, but it takes quite a bit of elbow grease with files and sandpaper to get there:
merf-shapeways-steel-texture.jpg
merf-shapeways-steel-texture.jpg (70.07 KiB) Viewed 11375 times
Does anyone out there have the tools, expertise, and interest in taking a commission to polish down several pieces? I've got buckles, strap ends, and a couple other odds and ends than need attention.
Anyone interested?
Persona: Aerlinneth, Dúnedain of Amon Lendel c. TA 3010.
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Will Whitfoot
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Re: Steel polishing service?

Post by Will Whitfoot »

We have a series of large tumblers going over here almost 24/7. We have one VERY large one (holds about 30 gallons of parts/media) and seven medium size that each hold about three gallons of parts/media. The medium size ones are rolling almost all the time, so it's easy to toss something in. Tumblers are filled only halfway to get the best rolling action, and there is usually about two parts media to one part work, then fill with water to just cover. We use them for primarily deburring coin blanks before striking, and for "circulating" coins after striking, as well as for tumbling rocks and knocking rust off of iron objects found with metal detectors etc. If you don't mind corners getting a little rounded, we can throw them in with the rest of the stuff and let them "run with the dogs" as we say. Our typical media is a plastic pyramid about 3/8" tall embedded with 240 grit. It takes a day or sometimes two days to smooth off the burr raised by blank punching on copper or brass. Titanium works a lot slower... sometimes it has to roll for a week to smooth off rough corners. Stainless steel is about halfway between... usually a couple of days. The result is a smooth matte finish. If a higher polish is desired we can then "burnish" by putting them in with stainless steel balls as media... It usually only takes an hour or so to get from the matte to a pretty high polish. It's classified as "mass-finishing" in the trade. But if you have a lot of pieces to do, (as wel do) it cannot be beat. If somebody was interested... we've got several smaller tumblers (Thumblers tumblers... the small rubber barrel ones) that were demoted to standby as our quantities grew, but we haven't needed to use them in years. I could fix somebody up with a cheap tumbler system for small work.
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Elleth
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Re: Steel polishing service?

Post by Elleth »

Thaaat might work - awesome! There's one piece that has a couple points I'd hate to round off, but for the rest that sounds like a good solution. I'll email you tonight!
... also, hubby might be interested in a surplused tumbler: he was interested when I mentioned the idea. I'll pass details to him. Do you have a model name by any chance?
Persona: Aerlinneth, Dúnedain of Amon Lendel c. TA 3010.
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Will Whitfoot
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Re: Steel polishing service?

Post by Will Whitfoot »

search eBay "thumbler tumbler" ... the small black rubber ones not the larger "heavy duty" red barrel. I think we have one of the two barrel and two of the one-barrel types.
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