Wet Tmbler Drum Speed ? VIDEO ADDED

[tred1956]

HI,
Have been working on a wet tumbler. Making it from a treadmill. Have a 15 & a 9 inch piece of 8 inch pvc schedule 80 pipe to use for drums. My questions are. How many pounds of pins should I use in each drum? What size pins do you recommend? What RPMS should I turn 8 inch drums? Should be easy to change as it is dc motor and will be wired to be variable. Been playing with it with a 12 volt lithium drill battery and am getting 34 RPMS with it. Also have several feet of 6 inch schedule 40 pvc. If I decide to make smaller drums, what RPM should 6 inch drums turn?

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Thanks in advance
Doug

 

[Lapua40X]

Re: Wet Tmbler Drum Speed ?

Wet cleaning of anything in a rotating drum requires that the solution remain in continuous agitation. That usually means a slower speed will work better than a higher speed.
This may help:

http://www.massreloading.com/reloading_wet_tumbling.html

If you use that information as a basis for your calculations comparing the size of the commercial drum too yours and converting the rpm to inches per minute as it relates to the circumference of your drum you'll get a pretty solid answer.

 

[sparky123321]

Re: Wet Tmbler Drum Speed ?

A smooth round interior drum isn't going to work very well or even at all. Pretty much all tumblers have angular interiors to help agitate and keep the media moving.

 

[JohnKielly]

Re: Wet Tmbler Drum Speed ?

A smooth round interior drum isn't going to work very well or even at all. Pretty much all tumblers have angular interiors to help agitate and keep the media moving.

You could glue strips of PVC around the circumference. A friend did that to agitate bullets when he was moly coating.

 

[tred1956]

Thanks for all the input. When finished drum will have internal fins.

Safe shooting
Doug