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Post by chad on May 25, 2012 17:37:28 GMT -5
I finished a batch in the minisonic the other day and was a bit disappointed with the results. This was my first go at the vibe so it came closer to perfection than I'd expected, but there was more undercutting than I had hoped. It COULD be the material though i doubt it. I tumbled everything in rotary 60/90 and started the vibe for 220 and on. Was primarily small laguna halves. Some pockmarks remained though it'd have needed to be shaped on a wheel to get rid of them completely on the crusts. Some flame agate thrown in and 2 pcs of quartz. A couple questions for the vibe gurus:
1. Is it normal to have more undercutting in a vibe vs rotary?
2. I used micro alumina for polish. Would tin or cerium be more appropriate?
3. I did the standard 60/90-220-600-polish I always use in rotary with excellent results. Should I change it up in the vibe or add a 400 or 1200 step?
Definitely excited with the results being so fast. I usually spend 4-6 months with the rotaries so it's awesome to have it work so fast.
If nobody sees anything particularly obviously wrong with my process I'm just going to chalk it up to poor material compatibility and try again with a homogenous mixture of something hard.
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Post by johnjsgems on May 25, 2012 18:09:41 GMT -5
Did you have plenty of ceramic media (30% at least) or other media?
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Post by chad on May 25, 2012 18:51:39 GMT -5
I had only a small handful of the small ceramic pellets. I started with a heavy hand of pellets but didn't get good motion until I trimmed it down. I wouldn't think it was 30%, maybe 10-15?
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Post by Bikerrandy on May 25, 2012 20:58:41 GMT -5
If you go a long time with no good motion, the rocks will wear grooves in each other, this will look sorta like undercutting.
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Post by talkingstones on May 25, 2012 21:14:52 GMT -5
I've had undercutting with the Lot-O but the material was a bit weird. I'm thinking Laguna shouldn't really do that though. Mine was Willow Creek and it had some soft spots in it. I also try to run a test batch of little scraps before investing a whole load of a material. Also, I've found that sticking to one type of stone in a batch does help. I'm also a big fan of ceramic media, especially for smaller loads! Because a vibe works so fast and uses so little on the grit, I really don't feel guilty about running a load that is mostly ceramic. Keep working it and see if you can't post some photos of your next run so we can see what you're doing.
Cathy
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Post by susand24224 on May 26, 2012 2:30:36 GMT -5
I have less undercutting in the Lot-O than I used to in my rotaries, but I always use at least 1/3rd ceramic pellets. My sequence is rounding in a rotary, then 220-500-1000-polish. At first I did tripoli after 1000, but found that letting 1000 run a few days produced the same results. Sometimes I don't even do a polish stage since the rocks are well polished after the few days of 1000, but usually I do.
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