Treadmill Powered Wet Tumbler

[greybuff]

Picked up a treadmill on the side of the road and built a wet tumbler. The frame was built using the rollers and steel from the treadmill as was well as the motor, controls and the belt.
The drum was built from a piece of pvc with one end cap and a removable lid on the other end. Paddles were made fom 3 - 3/4" pvc pipes pop riveted to the inside of the larger pipe.
The motor speed is controlled with a potentiometer wired into the treadmill controls. Works great and pretty much free.

[JimB..]

Awesome, I've got eyes open for one, need a variable speed motor and controller for a small lathe and DC should work just fine.

[greybuff]

Check CL, you can pick up non working ones fairly cheap and the motors are usually still good. I've built 2x72 knife grinders using TM motors.

[Winger Ed.]

That is clever!

I've seen power tread mills at the Goodwill places on the cheap.
For a big tumbler, it might be practical to just put a fence on it to let the drum roll, but not go off.

[Brassmonkey]

I love seeing stuff made from junk!

[Reddirt204]

I made one from an old treadmill several years ago. originally I had a PVC barrel but was too small for the amount of brass I was trying to clean, not sure if the photo will attach or not but I built a stainless barrel that could hold about 750 .223 Rem at a time, bit of an over kill and very heavy... but works very well. By cutting and shutting the treadmill I can still use all the speed controls and switches. In the photo is 2 bags of brass (1450 total) 10lb of pins (from STM) alonf with the Lemi Shine and some washing liquid, I forgot to include the citric acid in the photo but I add 2x 45acp case fulls.

cheers

Redd

318558

[greybuff]

very nice, if I till had access to a sheetmetal shop I would build on out of stainless. But te pvc one I built works well. Large water pipe can be found in 10 and 12" diameters which would hold more brass.