Another diy tumbler enters the arena

[number21]

Well this tumbler I cobbled together yesterday. It has a 1/20 hp GE cont. duty motor. It runs at 1720 rpm and with the pulleys its final drum rotation is 72 RPM. This may be a little high but has been running 36 hours and my rocks are getting tumbled. I used 5/8" drill rod for the shafts with 3/4" OD, 5/8" ID rubber tubing. The barrel is just standard 4" pvc pipe and a plumbers inspection cap. I put in a couple of pvc bumps inside the barrel for more action. The base and frame is made from 2x12 and 2x4 that was going to be thrown out. The 2x12 we used to use to support motors and transmissions for years, cleaning it was a pain. The drive belt is a link belt that was picked up at Harbor Freight. Actually the only things I had to buy for this was 2 5/8" ball bearings, drive belt, and leveling feet. The rest was just junk I found when I cleaned out my garage. The motor does not use much power. It is pulling 1.4 amps, 74 watts and is using .073 kwh of power and hour. So that should be about 22-23 cents a day, not bad. Right now I am tumbling some Sodalite. My first piece of lapidary equipment I built was a sphere machine. When I did the preforms just could not throw away the off cuts. So in this machine they go. I have already checked it and it is rounding the stones as it should.

[number21]

Another view.

[Toad]

Nice job. Looks like you have room for more barrels.

[number21]

Thanks, I built it so I can run at least 3 barrels at once. I have alot of marble, onyx, jaspers and other off cuts to run.

[kwheeler]

I'm starting to shop around/contemplate building a tumbler for the same reasons...I cut cabs and have all these pieces that I can't quite get a cab out of, but can't stand to part with, either...this is quite an insidious hobby...lol. It looks like you did a really great job on the tumbler. Congratulations!

Kristopher

[drjo]

Congrats on the good work!

Dr Joe

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[Hard Rock Cafe]

Nice work! That should do the job. How did you seal the closed end of the pipe?

The RPMs seem a little high, but it's easy enough to swap out the pulley. It probably won't matter much until you get to the pre-polish and polish stages when I'd be concerned about chipping.

Chuck

[Mudshark]

Cool tumbler!The link belt is great stuff,I use it on a lot of my woodworking machines.

Mike

[rocklicker]

Great looking tumbler! I really like how you were able to built it with mostly found materials! I would think about slowing it down some to maybe 40rpm or so, but that's easy enough with a larger pulley. Who knows, maybe you've go one around somewhere!
Steve

[number21]

Thanks for the replies. @hard Rock Cafe I used a irrigation plumbing cap. The pipe had to be filed down on one end for the cap to fit. The next barrels will be made with actual pipe caps which are the right size. If you notice the dark grey ring of JB Weld was used to fix a leak. I am planning to slow it down a bit by putting on a bigger pulley, a 8" should get me to 53 RPM and a 10" would be about 43 RPM. I do have one of those in the garage but it is a 1/2" pulley shaft and I would have to enlarge it to 5/8". Will see what I want to do on Monday.

[Rockoonz]

That looks like it will go for a long time. I didn't know Harbor freight had link belt, thanks for the info.

Lee

[NDK]

That's a great looking and built tumbler. I bet it'll outlive any of us on here!

How about sharing photos of your sphere machine?!

Thanks,

Nate

[Saskrock]

Good looking machine. Should do lots of polishing.

[garrett]

number21,
Nice job on the tumbler. By the way, would that happen to be the frame for a T-bucket or other classic hot rod next to your new tumbler?
I’m sure you’ll have great fun with both.

[number21]

Thanks, Actually that is a frame for a '79 Jeep CJ-7 I am restoring. ;D

[Hard Rock Cafe]

Thanks for the info. on the cap. That makes sense with the gray line. The challenge with regular pipe caps that I hand was that I could no longer use a test plug (because the cap was larger diameter than the pipe), unless I were to cut a hole in the cap. I solved that problem by cutting a coupler in half, which made the two ends the same diameter.

Chuck

[number21]

Here is the new barrels I have made. I used the proper end caps. They had 1 inch of the end cut off and glued to the end of the tube and then the rest of the cap on the other end. There was a gap on the inside where the pipe meets the cap so I used silicon caulk in that area so no rocks will get stuck. Also I had a 10" pulley but it was 1/2 shaft so I drilled it out to 5/8". Not a good idea, even though I used a drill press it came out crooked. With the 10" I was able to get it down to 38 rpm for the new barrels. A 9" pulley is on order with the correct hole. It will run true and stop the shakes. Also it will put the barrel at 43 rpms.

[NDK]

How much noise do these plastic barrels make? I've been thinking of making some myself, but don't want to hear a lot of noise form the tumbler.

Thanks,

Nate

[number21]

They do make a bit of noise. Mine is running out in the garage so I cannot hear it run. The first 2-3 days are louder until the 80 grit has rounded the stones a bit. The smaller 80 grit tumbler I have some plastic pellets running with my sodalite. The sodalite needed a second run on the course so I had to use a filler. That barrel is much quieter with the pellets so I am guessing the 220-polish won't be bad.

[NDK]

Thanks. I my have to try it.

Nate