Technology of tumbling parts. Metal tumbling Tumbling services

Tumbling is a method of finishing products in the environment of loose abrasive bodies. Abrasive bodies may be called tumbling filler or tumbling abrasive.
Depending on the method of mixing the tumbling filler in the drum of a tumbling machine, we can talk about several types of tumbling. Let's consider Various types tumbling machines, their advantages and disadvantages.

1. Tumbling drums.

The simplest type of tumbling equipment. The machine is a cylindrical or multifaceted drum. The drum can be positioned horizontally, vertically, or inclined relative to the axis of rotation and is driven by an electric motor. Tumbling processing is carried out due to the free mixing of products and tumbling bodies while the drum rotates.

The undoubted advantages of this type of tumbling equipment include low cost and simplicity. At the same time, a large number of disadvantages inherent in drum tumbling lead to the gradual displacement of this type of processing by other more advanced tumbling methods.

Disadvantages of drum tumbling machines:
  1. Low processing speed compared to vibrating machines and rotary finishing machines.
  2. Problem with separation (separation) of products and tumbling bodies after completion of processing.
  3. Difficulty in implementing wet processing.
  4. Impossibility of delicate processing of products of complex configuration, thin-walled and easily deformable products.
  5. Impossibility of visual control of the tumbling process.
  6. Uneven surface treatment in products with complex configurations.
  7. High noise during drum tumbling operation and the need for additional noise insulation or removal of tumbling equipment to separate rooms.

All of the above has resulted in the fact that drum tumbling today is used, as a rule, only for simple tumbling processes that are undemanding in terms of surface quality. For example, eliminating traces of casting (burst, sprues, etc.) after foundry processes.

The most popular type of tumbling equipment today. It is a working area in the form of a drum (bath, tube, etc.) with an attached vibration drive. Parts and finishing bodies are mixed into the work area. Very often, solutions of compounds are additionally added to the work area (wet or physical-chemical type of tumbling treatment).
The operating principle of the vibrating tumbling machine is as follows. Using an electric motor with a vibration drive, the working area of ​​the machine (with tumbling filler and parts loaded into it) produces oscillatory movements. These vibrations cause the products and filler to move relative to each other. As a result, the abrasive tumbling bodies begin to cause microimpacts on the surface of the products, which leads to micro-removal of material from the surface of the product.

Currently, a huge number of vibratory tumbling machines of various sizes and designs are produced. For example, to speed up the tumbling process, products can be rigidly mounted on a spindle and during vibration processing, additional rotational movements are imparted to these products.

Advantages of vibrating tumbling machines.
  1. Versatility. When changing the range of processed products, as a rule, it is enough to change the tumbling bodies to ones more suitable for new products.
  2. Possibility of simultaneous processing of large batches of products by loading in bulk.
  3. High processing speed compared to drum tumbling machines.
  4. Possibility of processing thin-walled products.
  5. Possibility of uniform finishing of products with complex configurations.
  6. Possibility of delicate tumbling processing of products made of soft materials.
  7. Possibility of visual control of the processing process.

A specific type of tumbling equipment that receives Lately increasingly widespread. The operating principle of rotary (or centrifugal) finishing machines is as follows. The working chamber is a stationary, vertically mounted drum. At the bottom of the drum there is a rotating plate with blades (the so-called actuator). Products and tumbling abrasives are loaded into the working chamber in bulk. After putting the actuator into rotational motion, it imparts rotation to the entire mixture of tumbling bodies and products.
Moreover, to increase the processing efficiency, the inner surface of the stationary working area has a special profile, which sets the planetary-torus-shaped trajectory of the tumbling mixture.
The main disadvantages of rotary machines include the inability to process heavy and bulky parts, as well as high level wear of the inner surface of the drum and the interface between the drum and the actuator (especially during wet processing).

Advantages of rotary machines.
  1. The highest productivity among tumbling machines in a free abrasive environment.
  2. Possibility of simultaneous processing of a large number of parts.
  3. The ability to set the final surface roughness of products by adjusting the actuator rotation speed. The principle is “lower frequency, cleaner surface.”
  4. High quality of the resulting surface (achievable parameter Ra 0.30-0.35)

4. “Towing” finishing (spindle finishing, drag finishing).

A specific and rarely used type of finishing equipment that differs greatly high efficiency processing.
Operating principle: the workpiece (or several products) is attached to the spindle. Next, the spindle is given a rotational movement and it, together with the part, is lowered into the working bowl with tumbling abrasive. In the contact zone between the surface of the product and the abrasive, material is quickly removed from the surface of the workpiece. To update the abrasive in the contact zone, either the spindle is given slow additional movements (left-right, up-down relative to the bowl with tumbling bodies), or a vibrating drive is connected to the working bowl (by analogy with vibrating tumbling machines).
The main disadvantage of towing tumbling is the simultaneous processing of a small number of products.

At the same time, towing tumbling allows you to obtain a very high quality of surface treatment with minimal processing time. This has led to the fact that towed finishing machines have become widespread in high-tech industries (aircraft construction, precision mechanics, medical prosthetics, tool production, etc.) industries where the requirements for the surface quality of products are very high.

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Under such a concept as tumbling, implied technological process, during which the surface of a solid material is pretreated and cleaned.

Tumbling technology, is actively used in instrument making and mechanical engineering in order to carry out the so-called dimensionless processing of various details, and specifically - to remove burrs and burrs from them, quickly and effectively remove rust and scale from them, round off sharp edges, clean and degrease surfaces, polish them, and also give them the necessary roughness.

From a process point of view tumbling is nothing more than running in parts in special bells and drums together with abrasive and polishing materials. In this case, the rotation speed ranges from 10 to 50 revolutions per minute.

At industrial enterprises for implementation technologies for tumbling parts drums of both large and small diameters, having a vertical, horizontal or inclined axis of rotation, as well as bell-type devices are used. All this equipment can be equipped with manual or automatic loading and unloading.

Tumbling technology used mainly in cases where it is necessary to process similar details V large quantities, and at the same time ensure not only a significant reduction in the share manual labor, but also guaranteed to achieve certain characteristics of the surfaces of the processed products.

As a working tool when implementing the technology of tumbling parts, special tumbling bodies are used.

As for the effectiveness that it has tumbling technology, then it depends on a number of factors. Among them, experts consider operational properties to be the most important. tumbling bodies, however, an important role belongs to the specific method and mode of processing, as well as those design features that have tumbling bodies. It should be noted that the main function of processing parts in this technological process is assigned to tumbling bodies.

Together with details tumbling bodies begin to move relative to each other in the working drum of special technological machines, which are divided into two main types: electromagnetic and mechanical. The latter, in turn, are classified according to the type of movement into drums with vibration drive and rotating ones. Vibrating tumbling carried out in such a way that tumbling bodies and the parts acquire relative motion due to the fact that they are mixed throughout the entire volume with the help of vibration, and in a chaotic manner. In the vast majority of cases, the so-called towing is produced in rotating drums. tumbling. For its implementation, the processed detail fixed in place relative to tumbling bodies which rotate in the drum.

Tumbling technology can be wet or dry. In production wet tumbling a special one is added to the drum tumbling solution, if carried out dry tumbling, then this does not happen.

All currently used tumbling bodies are divided into porcelain, ceramic and plastic. They can be in the form of spheres, cylinders, parallelepipeds, cones and tetrahedrons. Often as tumbling bodies shell crumbs are used walnut, corundum and other materials without a binder. Materials for tumbling are selected in accordance with the required quality of surface treatment and part shape.

In this article I want to talk about jewelry tumbling. Tumbling is a very useful jewelry tool. It is intended for cleaning jewelry after the casting process, that is, after you have poured the metal into the flask, taken out the resulting product, it must be properly cleaned and tumbling is simply necessary.

There are drum tumbling, vibrating tumbling and electromagnetic tumbling. I thought for a long time which one was better, I asked many people, but there are so many people with so many opinions. And then I decided to buy an electromagnetic tumbling machine. Its price ranges from 14,500 rubles to 24,000 rubles.

The filler of this electromagnetic tumbling machine is small metal needles. By placing gold or silver jewelry tumbling drum, these needles penetrate into all inaccessible contaminated areas of the decoration and clean them. It is very convenient to clean chains and bracelets in it, since they have a lot of hard-to-reach places.



You need to add something to the water detergent or liquid soap, and it is also advisable that the water be warm. After tumbling the product, the metal is polished better and faster, and the decoration looks perfect. It is very pleasant to give it to a client and see his satisfied and happy face. Of course, many jewelers do without tumbling, but for professional jewelry creation, it is simply necessary. I know two jewelers who somehow assembled the tumbling themselves, with their own hands.

They really spent a huge amount of time on this. According to them, homemade tumbling cost 7,500-8,500 thousand rubles. It cleans no worse than the factory one, I saw it with my own eyes. I don’t recommend taking on tumbling modeling if you don’t have professional skills; it’s better to just buy it, even if this option is more expensive.



Also, I wanted to tell you about the tumbling machine that I saw at the factory that produces jewelry. She is much bigger size and has a higher number of revolutions per minute. This is not easy, because it serves huge volumes of products. According to master jewelers working in production, there are practically no problems with tumbling; it works properly. The main thing is to change the cleaning filler regularly, as over time it turns into dust and the quality of cleaning may decrease.

IN overall choice It’s up to you whether to buy a tumbler or assemble it yourself, but you can be sure that you will need it. After all, before buying any tool, every master thinks about whether he needs this thing or whether he can do without it. That’s all I wanted to say about tumbling, I wish all jewelers beautiful and clean products and more orders.

Jewelers, car enthusiasts, and manufacturers of facing materials often face the same question: how to make a beautiful, shiny surface for a product? Tumbling comes to the rescue. a technological process in which the hard surface of a part is cleaned and machined.

The essence of the method

Tumbling involves mixing the parts being processed in a container. The interaction of components occurs in two ways of movement:

  • rotary (rotating);
  • vibrational.

Solid tumbling bodies, due to friction, clean the surface to the desired level of gloss or roughness by removing microparticles from it. The process can take from 4 to 80 hours.

The advantage of this method is the ability to process surfaces with non-standard shapes and sizes. Disadvantages include the inability to process thin-walled parts.

It is worth noting that tumbling is a process of rolling in parts that can be done using two methods:

  • dry;
  • wet.

The dry method uses special pastes, powders and abrasive components. With the wet method, working fluid, coagulants, and tumbling solutions are added to the drum. Wet tumbling is used, as a rule, before applying various types of coatings: galvanic, enameled, and so on.

Where is it used?

Answering the question of what tumbling is, it should be noted that in addition to polishing, it allows you to remove flash, burrs, rust, and scale from parts. Selecting the right abrasive material will give the desired roughness and specularity to the surface. Areas of application:

  • instrument making;
  • mechanical engineering;
  • construction;
  • jewelry making.

In addition, tumbling is used for household products (knives, blades, blades), car rims, natural materials(stones), plastic products.

Tumbling of minerals is done to give the stones a beautiful appearance, shine, grinding down sharp edges, creating smooth lines, getting rid of plaque and chips. Such products can later be cut or used as talismans and amulets. Tumbling is carried out for such stones as:

  • citrine;
  • aquamarine;
  • amethyst;
  • shungite;
  • jasper;
  • quartz;
  • obsidian;
  • malachite;
  • agate;
  • cornelian;
  • rhinestone;
  • hematite;
  • aventurine.

Equipment

For tumbling, special tumbling machines are used, which are standardized by GOST 10548-74. The working surface in cross section is a circle or a prism.


Tumbling materials

We can say that tumbling is such collisions, sliding and micro-cutting of the surfaces of parts with an abrasive filler, in which the final result will depend on the type and material of the lapping bodies. The following are used as cleaning tools:

  • sea ​​pebbles;
  • abrasive grain;
  • granular abrasive;
  • corn macerate;
  • nut shell;
  • polished steel spheres;
  • ceramic and vulcanite abrasives;
  • quartz sand;
  • limestone;
  • wooden bodies.

Step-by-step tumbling is often used, when the size of abrasive particles gradually decreases. The shape of the lapping bodies can also be different:

  • tetrahedron;
  • parallelepiped;
  • cylinder;
  • cone;
  • prism.

Sometimes it can take more time and resources to finish the processing than it does to manufacture the part.

Metal tumbling is one of the methods of processing metal products and involves cleaning surfaces from dirt, corrosion and scale. The final result is similar to the effect of polishing. The technology of tumbling is that abrasive material is loaded into the equipment container, along with the workpiece that needs to be processed. In some cases, in order to improve the quality of processing, water and a compound (thermoplastic polymer resin) are also added to the container. Application of various chemical compositions allows processing a wide range of materials.

Types of tumbling

There are several types of tumbling:
- rotary (the interaction of abrasive elements and the material being processed in a rotating drum. The productivity and processing speed with this method are not very high, but quite good quality metal processing);
- vibration (compared to the rotary method, the processing is higher quality and faster, it is also possible to process elements of any size and configuration);
- dry (using conventional abrasive filler);
- wet (water is added to the equipment container, which promotes better cleaning and allows you to polish the surface).

Types of equipment

Equipment for tumbling is divided into: - drum tumbling - when the drum with filler and parts rotates, towing tumbling occurs, and the tumbling elements polish the stationary product; - vibration - in such a unit there is a chaotic movement of parts and tumbling bodies in the drum due to vibration created by the engine; - electromagnetic – in which the filler moves due to the magnetic field created by the rotor. This processing method allows you to polish parts even in hard-to-reach places.

Fillers

Tumbling fillers are the basis for finishing the surfaces of various products. Modern fillers for tumbling are durable and effective, have different abrasiveness, sizes and geometric shape. When choosing a filler, factors such as:
- the shape of the abrasive body (for smoothing surfaces, for example, conical abrasives are used, and for rounding edges, a prism shape is used);
- required abrasive properties;
- size of the material (depending on the degree of processing);
- type of material (abrasives made of wood, plastic, porcelain, glass, etc. can be used).

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