So, I have the 18lb harbor freight tumbler, and put in some parts for about a day.
However, I'm having trouble finding a few tiny nuts and screws.
I tried sticking a magnet in the bowl and swirling it around a bit, but I didn't catch anything. I tried slowly draining the bowl and going through the media by hand, but was unsuccessful.
The colander I have is useless for this task since the parts would slip through the holes.
What do you use for sifting for tiny parts?
I don't have any wire screen/mesh handy. The stuff I found at the hardware stores around here is fencing material, and not nearly small enough for sifting.
[edit]: ah-ha, it just dawned on me that screens found on windows might be the right size.
Quoted from WOLF:Well, until you can get some fine mesh, try dumping some out on a cookie sheet and spreading it real thin, then try the magnet. However, if the small parts and screws and nuts are stainless, the magnet won't work.
Good suggestion, but I'm not too keen on going through it by hand again. I already wasted over an hour doing that. I was hoping to find a quicker method.
Quoted from ForceFlow:I was hoping to find a quicker method.
Take a plastic bowl and drill a bunch of holes in the bottom as big as you can make them without letting the parts through. The first time will take a while to do, but then you have the sifter forever.
I use my magnetic "stuff" holder from HF ... That I put nuts and bolts in as I remove them. I just drag it around the bowl and it gets about everything.
-scott
Quoted from WOLF:Try and old screen. Dump some out work it through by hand, rinse, repeat.
this above- fine metal window screen, cut a peice that mounts inside a big funnel, silicon the edge, just dump and place over catch container to gather grit, all parts are on top of the screen material.
Here's a pattern that helps me a lot. I do all my media work inside a big rectangular plastic container from Target (roughly 18" x 18" x 28"). This allows me to not have to vacuum the floor every time I tumble. I also use dedicated gloves since the media leaves a powder on everything. They stay in the plastic container. I do this:
(assuming you have small parts that are hard to find)
I'm starting to tumble like-parts together to minimize scraping of larger parts...
-mof
step 0: check to see that all pieces do not fall through the spaghetti strainer I'm using.
step 00: put everything through the ultrasonic FIRST so that I don't kill my media with dirty crap.
---
step 1. slide plastic container out from under a pin. splash some flitz in. plug it in, and tumble... (come back next day)
step 2. pull up a chair to my tumbling area, unplug tumbler, and open it up...
step 3. dump all media into large wide plastic bowl (there's room for this in my plastic container) through an old plastic spaghetti strainer. lift it until everything comes away in the strainer. knock it a few times into the container to get all media out
step 4. find pieces, set them aside
step 5. pour media back in from large plastic bowl
step 6. remove gloves, toss em in the big container. close up tumbler
step 7. go wipe down the items. sometimes they go in the ultrasonic then get dried immediately
Well, I picked up some widow screen mesh, and it turned out to be useless. The walnut shell media wouldn't pass through it. The grains were too big, apparently.
I ended up with a workable solution using the drain hole in the bowl of the tumbler.
I took a 16oz soda bottle I had squirreled away from another project, drilled a number of 3/16 holes in the bottom, and cut off the top.
Then to catch what came out of this make-shift sifter (say that 5 times fast, lol), I took a couple of 1 gallon milk jugs and cut off a portion of the top.
I ended up finding the parts I was looking for. It wasn't a very quick sifting process, but it beat going though over two gallons of media again by hand.
Quoted from Dommer:Magnet and pasta strainer.
exactly. pull the parts out with the magnet then have a bit of good pasta (with Wine)
images.jpegQuoted from Skypilot:Trust me ,get a magnet.
I have plenty of magnets that I've pulled from hard drives. It didn't really work. I still need to spread the media pretty thin before the magnet will attract small screws and nuts, so it's not much faster than going at it by hand.
Quoted from PopBumperPete:If the parts are so small that they fall through a colander, do they really need to be polished?
Just to clean them up a bit--not necessarily polish them to a mirror finish.
Here's an example of a nut before going in, and a nut after being tumbled for a few hours. The nut on the right is 1/4" in diameter and 3/32" thick. It was in roughly the same condition as the one on the left before tumbling.
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New Castle, PA
Brampton, ON
