DIY Tumbler - Unplanned

[tdd3748]

While my son and I were doing some clean up in my shop making a pile for the dump and a pile for Goodwill/Value Village. I pulled an OdJob mixer I had picked up at a garage sale a few years ago for a couple bucks that I had never used. Told my son to put it in the donate pile. A few minutes later he jokingly said "that mixer bucket would make tumbling brass faster since we would only need to do a single load per caliber". About 15 minutes later I ran across a box of conveyor rollers and a plan was born.

Shop cleanup stopped. After looking through some electric motors on the shelf we found a 62 rpm gear drive motor that seemed like the perfect power source. Using some bed frame angle and square tube. We tacked together a frame and even added wheels from the bed frame.
The first challenge the drum has molded paddles and those trough areas would not roll smoothly on the conveyor rollers.
Solution - weld up a ring from scrap sheet metal to provide a rolling surface.

Next challenge how to we get power from the drive motor to the drum? More digging through stuff on shelves. WE found a front wheel bearing assembly from one of the kids cars from the past. Decided it was just to big and hard to turn. About that time the wife walked in and said it was lunch time so work on the tumbler stopped. Over lunch my son was searching Ebay for spindles and found a mower deck spindle for $8.50 with free shipping. Problem for power transfer was solved.

The spindle arrived 4 days later and included a 5 1/2 pulley. I mounted the spindle to two pieces of angle and welded that to the frame. The blade side of the spindle had a triangular shape for engagement of a mower blade. I stopped by the local mower shop to see if they had any scrap blades I could have or purchase for cheap - no luck. So I decided to drill a hole and file the triangular shape in a piece of 1/8" plate.
I bent a couple L shapes out of 1/2 rebar and welded it to the plate and the other end would engage the troughs in the drum to provide drive power to rotate the drum.

The rest was straight forward mount the motor and buy a belt the proper length.

This was my first attempt which worked pretty well with 15lbs of stainless steel media and 15lbs of brass. When loaded with 50lbs of media and brass the little gear drive motor let me know I needed to rethink this design.

[Dieselhorses]

50 lbs.? Did you try half of that? I know the water adds a lot to it. Looks like it's well put together other than the torque! It's amazing the ideas that run through our head when cleaning out the shed! If you can find a 1 HP motor that you can meter the RPM with a router switch, that might work.

[tdd3748]

Besides the little gear drive motor not having enough power there was just not enough room to add and an idler pulley for added belt tension so when loaded up with close to 100#s the belt would slip without and OMG tension spring. So it was decided I need to change from belt drive to chain drive.

I was now in search of a larger gear reducer, so off to CL, Offerup and Ebay for some shopping. I found a used Ohio Gear 30-1 gear reducer on Ebay. Being the cheap SOB I am I contacted the seller directly and was able to negotiate a deal for $20 plus shipping.
At this point I was now into the project for about $64 the original plan was only have invested my time. Plus I still needed motor to drive the the gear reducer.

[Sig556r]

There's always treasure in the "donate/get-rid" box...just need to be a little creative

[tdd3748]

While I was waiting for the gear reducer to arrive I had gone through the electric motors in my shop. I had two candidates that might work both were old pump motors one 1/4hp with 5/8" shaft the other 1hp with 3/4" shaft.

The gear drive arrived and I was happy to discover that it was 5/8" and the 1/4hp motor I had was going to work.

[tdd3748]

Tumbler is Complete

Finished assembly of tumbler today. Since I ended up having to purchase a gear reducer which ruined my "Build for No Cost" from stuff I had in the shop, I decided to add a timer which added another $20 to the project. So total investment ended up being less than $100. In the end I am happy with the result and the tumbler works very well. I run 50# of stainless pins, when loaded with brass it runs very quiet. I think now my HF tumblers will not see much use other than for small batches of magnum pistol brass.

[Dieselhorses]

So you can mass produce these and sell for 399.00? That's one heck of an invention! Good job! Only question I have is where did you find the cannister?

[ulav8r]

So you can mass produce these and sell for 399.00? That's one heck of an invention! Good job! Only question I have is where did you find the cannister?

Read the original post. It plainly stated that he got it at a garage sale.

Amazon has one in a 7 gallonsize. https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-OdJob...r=8-2-fkmrnull

[Dieselhorses]

Read the original post. It plainly stated that he got it at a garage sale.

Amazon has one in a 7 gallonsize. https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-OdJob...r=8-2-fkmrnull

I meant to ask what size or brand it was. Thanks for answering.

[tdd3748]

Read the original post. It plainly stated that he got it at a garage sale.

Amazon has one in a 7 gallonsize. https://www.amazon.com/Leonard-OdJob...r=8-2-fkmrnull

Yep that is it, OdJob manual cement mixer. I see them frequently on CL for 10 or 15 bucks

[rmantoo]

Seriously, Big Dawg tumblers quit production a while ago, and now his site goes to an error page, so I think- but don't know for sure- that he's no longer in the tumbler business: There is definitely a market for these.