Thanks for the sources of media. I'll give both places a call Monday.

I ran it a bit more yesterday. Definately need more media. It does have a nice top to bottom circulation going on. With this amount of media, it takes about a minute to turn completely over in the tub.

The finish isn't quite there yet. It's alright after 30 minutes. 2 or 3 swipes with a scotch brite pad cleans it up. I think with a bit more aggressive media and the propper compound, I'll be there.

I let all the water that had previuosly been in the tub drain into a bucket overnight. From 2 gallons of water, I got about a 1/4" of aluminum clay in the bottom of the bucket. I dumped the water into a large tub and put a fan in front of it to see how long it would take to evaporate.

This has me thinking that I will incorporate a setteling tank and filter into the sprayer system. I'm thinking that I'll park the pump up high in a 5 gallon bucket so that the crud can accumulate at the bottom. If I lined the bucket with a plastic bag, I could just let the goo build up to a certain point. Once it was "full", I could dump the water into the shaker tub with the drain closed and just change out the bag.

Ken,
You are correct in that the weights cause the whole thing to shake. The were a couple reasons why I chose not to just mount a weight on the motor. From the outset, I figured that different materials may need different frequencies to be adequately finished. This would mean that I needed an easy way of changing the speed that the weights spin. Using different sized pulleys to vary the alxe rpms seemed like the easiest, and most economical route.
The other reason is that I did not want to have all that weight swinging directly on the motor's shaft. The amount of force necessary to lift 300lbs of media and 100 pounds of frame, tub and parts 1000 times a minute would probably make short work of the bearings inside of a 25year old air compressor motor. With the setup I'm using, the force of the swinging weights goes through 4 1" ball bearings mounted in pillow blocks, which are all bolted to the cradle assembly. The motor still gets some side loads from the frame hopping up and down, varying the tension on the belt. But those loads are much less in size and harshness than they would be swinging the weight on the motor.


I considered the weights on the end of the axle shaft, but I am worried about something coming loose and ricochetting around the shop. My "weights" are 2 6" lengths of 3.5" aluminum tube, with a 1/2" wall. The axle goes through the tubes, and the tubes are bolted to the axle. If the weight mounting bolts were to break, the weight would just spin on the alxe. They would have to go through one of the bearing assemblies or the .5" wall tubing would have to come apart for anything to fly off of the axle. The largest piece that could come off the assembly is a bolt head.

To add weight, I figure I could use stick-on lead wheel weights. To remove weight, I will have to take them off and run them through the band saw.