[nitewatchman]

Anyone with experience using a Bel Air FM4000 Tub Deburr?

Any other experiences good or bad?

gary

[Steve Seebold]

I have both a 10 quart and a 3 quart Burr King vibratory tumbler. Both work really well.

Sometimes I’ll use one of them with walnut shells and rouge for polishing. If you’re gonna do that, give yourself about a week but it will do a
beautiful job.

[nitewatchman]

I need something with a little more capacity. Need to clean rusty castings 7"x 2-1/2" x 1-1/2" and keep up with a 14 minute cycle time.

gary

[Steve Seebold]

I need something with a little more capacity. Need to clean rusty castings 7"x 2-1/2" x 1-1/2" and keep up with a 14 minute cycle time.

gary

Perhaps you should be looking at a bead blaster instead.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Cycle times on deburring machines is measured in hours, sometimes even days, but almost never minutes. My best machine takes 1-2 hours to deburr 6061, leaving a finish that looks like they were bead-blasted. Then the parts need to be washed, and the media that gets jammed in the holes manually cleared. There is no painless way to deburr.

Regards,
Ray L.

[jwatte]

With enough machines in parallel, you can keep up with an average of 14 minute cycle time.

What's your "best machine"? It sounds nice!

[nitewatchman]

Cycle times on deburring machines is measured in hours, sometimes even days, but almost never minutes. My best machine takes 1-2 hours to deburr 6061, leaving a finish that looks like they were bead-blasted. Then the parts need to be washed, and the media that gets jammed in the holes manually cleared. There is no painless way to deburr.Regards,Ray L.

Logic is sound but only assumes that the debur machine holds one part.

This is the reason for a larger machine (1.5 to 3 Cubic Feet) that can hold 10 or 15 parts for a cycle of 1 to 2 hours.

Only need to remove the rust to keep the mess down when machining. The parts are Zinc Chromate Plated after machining and the acid pickle for the plating does a good job of deburring the machined parts (removes burrs and sharp edges).

gary

[nitewatchman]

With enough machines in parallel, you can keep up with an average of 14 minute cycle time.What's your "best machine"? It sounds nice!

I want a NEW medium size polyurethane bowl machine 28" to 36" in diameter.

Giant, Sweco, Bel Air, UltaMatic, etc. make machines of this type. I like the Bel Air machine a lot. It has a solid urethane bowl and the bowl is replaceable.

Machines I have had before have their life limited by the polyurethane lining of the bowl. Once the lining wears through the machine is pretty much scrap since you will wear through a bare bowl fairly quickly and relined bowls are a hit or miss.

A Bel Air 1.3CuFt is about $5,500 and a 3CuFt is about $8,400.

gary

[MichaelHenry]

I know nothing of vibratory deburring so this may be off the mark, but John Grimsmo bout a fairly large one with a rectangular tank recently and seemed to like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWk3C8kXnUU

[Don Clement]

I use a Burr-King 20 quart vibratory deburring machine. I do do parts that are ~9" square x 1/2" but have a >3" hole in them so fit in my 20 qt machine. Typically takes many hours to get a matt finish on aluminum parts using medium sized plastic medium. Don't think a deburring maching could accomplish what you want in 15 minutes though.
Don

[nitewatchman]

Math is simple, machining cycle time is 15 minutes. If the debur machine holds 16 parts then the batch of 16 parts will supply the machining operation for about 4 hours.

The machining cycle time is 14 minutes NOT the cleaning cycle time.

Remember, I just want to derust, descale the parts. I will use a very aggressive 1/2"+ ceramic media.

gary

[joshetect]

I use a slightly modified cement mixer from lowes. Basically i just removed the metal augers and put some delrin blocks in their place. Need to do a fan upgrade to it next like you did for the 1100

works well for ~$300 and holds 50lbs of media

A vibratory setup with flow through would be nice though!

[nitewatchman]

Update!

Vibratory Deburring machine is in and working.

To support the machining cycle the deburr machine has to have a part available to the 1100 every 15 minutes. I am running general purpose Tri-Star media and the machine is batching 25 to 30 castings every 2 hours. This easily supports my need for a 15 minute cycle time with a batch cycle time of about 4 to 6 minutes each.

I bought a 3 CuFt Tub Type machine with a working tub size of 13" x 13" x 31". I ordered the machine from AccuBrass at 2:30 CDT on Thursday and C&M Topline shipped the machine out at 4:30 PDT the same day. FedEx picked the machine up in Goleta, CA and delivered to Birmingham on the Next Friday (7 days later). Setting the machine up took about 2 hours with the biggest part of the setup consisting of drilling the concrete floor and bolting it down. The machine must be firmly anchored to work properly and to preserve the warranty. I also ordered their timer/pump control and a tub divider so that two differing media can be run at the same time to rough and polish in the two separated tub sections. Not the most quiet but not irritating or overwhelming (the 1100 is louder cutting the castings).

So it is working quite well. The majority of the rust is knocked off the castings in about 2 hours. Since these Zinc Plate with a Chromate Conversion Coating, they acid pickle after machining and this takes care of any remaining rust and machining burrs. The picture below shows a typical before and after shot of the casting, a TTS Drill Chuck for size comparison and a piece of TriStar Media. The casting weight is 2lbs-10oz.

gary

[BIG IGG]

Very NICE! :banana: