Do I have to sand or is there some magic I’m not aware of?
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2023
47 points (98.0% liked)
3DPrinting
15549 readers
228 users here now
3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.
The r/functionalprint community is now located at: !functionalprint@kbin.social or !functionalprint@fedia.io
There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml
Rules
-
No bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia. Code of Conduct.
-
Be respectful, especially when disagreeing. Everyone should feel welcome here.
-
No porn (NSFW prints are acceptable but must be marked NSFW)
-
No Ads / Spamming / Guerrilla Marketing
-
Do not create links to reddit
-
If you see an issue please flag it
-
No guns
-
No injury gore posts
If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is 
Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
where I work, we ocassionally put stuff like this in a vibratory tumbler for post processing. it's finicky to get all the parameters just right from one material to the next, but when it works it's AMAZING.
I’ve thought about attaching a jar to my drill and turning the part in some kind of medium.
What kind of parameters need adjusting for your process?
doing that is going to create a rotary tumbler. i think for this specific object that might work totally fine, but it might be too rough for anything with fine details or sharp angles. vibratory tumblers are more likely to keep the object's overall geometry intact, whereas rotary ones will eventually sand things into kind of an ovoid shape?
as for parameters, the main ones are which grit levels for each stage, how long to run it for each stage, which tumbling medium to use, and how much water. i haven't really ironed out any general guidelines but in my experience (perhaps obviously) most plastics don't need nearly as long as most minerals.
it doesn't seem like many people have gone this route yet, so if it works out, please post about your process!
I just looked in to a vibratory tumbler, they aren’t cheap!
You're not wrong... 😅
I am fortunate enough to work somewhere that has one, although we also make it available to the public!
If you're in the US you could try the harbor freight route. They're still not super cheap, but this will let you feel out whether or not you'll get enough use out of one to justify buying a "nicer" one of/when the harbor freight unit breaks.