|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 26, 2019 20:31:20 GMT -5
I had a deal with my son A.J. that he could keep all of the proceeds from his Arts and Craft Fair without me taking any deductions for any of the rocks, slabs, etc. if he set it aside to reinvest in the hobby, knowing that at least some of his purchases would end up feeding his next shows inventory. The first thing he chose was some mixed glass to tumble. I will admit I was not all that excited at first. Well now I am a believer, it really was a lot of fun and a learning experience. While not jamesp glass we're pretty happy for the first batch and already have some adjustments we want to implement the next go around. Al
|
|
jasonshort
starting to spend too much on rocks
Member since June 2019
Posts: 113
|
Post by jasonshort on Jun 26, 2019 20:38:23 GMT -5
That is really cool. I wa debating tumbling glass can you tell me how it was done? Thanks
|
|
|
Post by MsAli on Jun 26, 2019 20:59:36 GMT -5
Really love how those came out
Good job!
|
|
|
Post by fernwood on Jun 27, 2019 1:53:16 GMT -5
Excellent.
|
|
|
Post by greig on Jun 27, 2019 7:22:08 GMT -5
Really nice results. Did you buy your glass for this purpose or was it from something you collected? I was looking at an old (early 1900's) bottle dump where somebody had broken a number of dug bottles, leaving a pile of old glass. I thought it would be good material to tumble.
|
|
|
Post by hummingbirdstones on Jun 27, 2019 8:15:07 GMT -5
Those look great! Nice job on them.
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Jun 27, 2019 8:18:46 GMT -5
Awesome job Rockindad. You sure found some fine glass. The glass is addictive especially if you have a colored glass mix. The variety of glass mix combos never ends making it a fun subject to tumble. And having a batch of almost fracture free/pit free tumbles is doable with glass. A fine homogenous material. No need to discuss much tumbling strategy since you have mastered eliminating the frosting issues. Glass often gets deep frost damage in the rotary and for that reason it is advisable to keep your rotary with 80 to 85% fill. Such a high fill retards grinding rate but who cares since glass shapes fast being so soft and rounding off so quick. No need to use aggressive SiC 30/SiC 46. SiC 60 and SiC 80 shapes it plenty fast enough and the SiC can often be used a 2nd time. Glass slurry settles fast and concretes quickly in a rotary in coarse steps, beware of stopping the rotary for more than(one minute) a few minutes and allowing concretion. No explanation for the rock hard concretions, but when they happen they can damage a fair percentage of your tumbles. Then the vibe is even more likely to frost it. Especially as you approach and enter polish steps. I see you eliminated that issue. The most common failure. Sawing your tumbles up with a tile saw is also easy due to the softness of glass. Sawing sure reduces hammer born fractures and allows desired shapes. Fancy vases make great candidates for the tile saw since the thickness of the glass is close to cab thickness. I just hand hold the vase and saw it to smaller pieces in a calculated manner for optimum cab sizes and shapes. Younger and college age folks love glass jewelry. You can play the recycle/repurpose card with them.
|
|
Fossilman
Cave Dweller
Member since January 2009
Posts: 20,681
|
Post by Fossilman on Jun 27, 2019 9:44:59 GMT -5
Spot on! Nice job!
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 27, 2019 16:55:45 GMT -5
Really nice results. Did you buy your glass for this purpose or was it from something you collected? I was looking at an old (early 1900's) bottle dump where somebody had broken a number of dug bottles, leaving a pile of old glass. I thought it would be good material to tumble. Just a mix of random glass specifically for this purpose. Next time will be more self collected from around the house, etc. I told my wife to hide any glass she values as Jr. is already eyeing up a few things. One thing learned that wasn't too surprising is thicker is better- gives you more material to get a nice shape during the first stage, I wouldn't bother with a lot of glass that is just to thin to get decent results. I think I may start stopping at garage/yard sales looking for old bottles, vases, lamps, etc. Al
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 27, 2019 17:25:45 GMT -5
Awesome job Rockindad . You sure found some fine glass. The glass is addictive especially if you have a colored glass mix. The variety of glass mix combos never ends making it a fun subject to tumble. And having a batch of almost fracture free/pit free tumbles is doable with glass. A fine homogenous material. No need to discuss much tumbling strategy since you have mastered eliminating the frosting issues. Glass often gets deep frost damage in the rotary and for that reason it is advisable to keep your rotary with 80 to 85% fill. Such a high fill retards grinding rate but who cares since glass shapes fast being so soft and rounding off so quick. No need to use aggressive SiC 30/SiC 46. SiC 60 and SiC 80 shapes it plenty fast enough and the SiC can often be used a 2nd time. Glass slurry settles fast and concretes quickly in a rotary in coarse steps, beware of stopping the rotary for more than(one minute) a few minutes and allowing concretion. No explanation for the rock hard concretions, but when they happen they can damage a fair percentage of your tumbles. Then the vibe is even more likely to frost it. Especially as you approach and enter polish steps. I see you eliminated that issue. The most common failure. Sawing your tumbles up with a tile saw is also easy due to the softness of glass. Sawing sure reduces hammer born fractures and allows desired shapes. Fancy vases make great candidates for the tile saw since the thickness of the glass is close to cab thickness. I just hand hold the vase and saw it to smaller pieces in a calculated manner for optimum cab sizes and shapes. Younger and college age folks love glass jewelry. You can play the recycle/repurpose card with them. Thanks James. Completely avoiding the frosting issue is mostly due to 1) we do a lot of softer materials already and it prepared us well for glass, and 2) really learning and studying our equipment so we can manipulate it for different materials. For example our vibe (Thumler's UV-10) can be made to run as aggressive or soft as I want by only adjusting a few parameters. At one time I was prepared to tear it down to modify the weight, motor, springs, etc. to get it to run softer. The only reason I hesitated was because I also liked how aggressive it was. I even considered getting a second one to have a gentle machine and an aggressive machine. Through a lot of experimentation I can now dial in the one we have, as is, anywhere on the spectrum. That glass sure is addicting. I thought for sure that some of the pieces that have fractures were going to break up during the first stage but most of them made it all the way through and look really cool. Definitely will be doing plenty more. Trying to work a very interesting source right now for what I believe would be phenomenal material but they do not seem interested. I'll just have to keep at them! Al
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 27, 2019 17:28:44 GMT -5
That is really cool. I wa debating tumbling glass can you tell me how it was done? Thanks Hi Jason, A good starting place would be to treat it like softer rocks, whether you are doing this rotary, vibe or a combination of the two. Al
|
|
braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
|
Post by braat on Jun 27, 2019 23:11:02 GMT -5
Good Job! Your photos convinced me I need to give this a try after I do some glass hounding! Care to share your UV-10 mods/adjustments with all us fellow UV-10 owners??
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Jun 28, 2019 3:40:32 GMT -5
It appears the vibe manufacturers focused more on tumbling agate hardness stones. For years people were challenged with obsidian. The Lot-O appeared on the scene and people mastered obsidian much easier. My energy was spent modifying a Vibrasonic for obsidian and glass. As it stands the modified unit won't bruise glass if it had to. It is simply too gentle. But it does agate hardness stones just as well as it did before the mods go figure. A win win. No secrets, the mods involved adding weight to the hopper and lowering it closer to the vibration source for shorter shaking distance, simple as that. And using thicker sugar slurry. I am educated and experienced in process engineering. Finally solving the glass issue was one of my bigger life victories in process projects. You should be walking tall w/this accomplishment.
If you live near a big city check out the glass blowers in town. They often have a large scrap pile, many do not remelt their scraps. I am 3 for 3, all 3 glass blowers in town gave me all the scrap I wanted. One gave me over a ton, the other will give me a about 5 -5 gallon buckets every 2 weeks. EBAY sells nice glass but it costs a fair amount. And thrift stores for fine glass vases.
I picked up a kiln. You can spread small chunks of (art glass with known melting menu)glass on the shelves and darn near melt the small chunks into perfect cab blobs perfect for tumbling. The glass blower's scraps are usually art glass with known melting schedule. Perfect for melting.
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 28, 2019 11:06:26 GMT -5
Good Job! Your photos convinced me I need to give this a try after I do some glass hounding! Care to share your UV-10 mods/adjustments with all us fellow UV-10 owners?? Sure, I'll stick to concepts as the recipes change based on material being run. Also, as mentioned above, this is a stock machine as after much experimenting I felt I could get what I needed to without touching the motor, springs, weights, etc. The main variables I focus on are: 1) Fill level. This affects speed and aggressiveness. Filling up to the blue line or somewhere close will give you a fast and harsh movement, enough to shake the paint from the walls. Would only use this for the toughest of materials and even then nothing that would spall, fracture, chip, etc. easily. Typically used only during first step. Conversely, filling the bowl ALL the way to the top rim (when running it will be sucked down some) will slow the action dramatically and be much more gentle. It is completely variable between these two points so experiment with levels in between to attain the speed and attack you want. 2) Slurry thickness. This is not necessarily the same thing as moisture. The UV-10 has the ability to move some mighty thick masses that can provide much cushioning. I think I have pushed ours to the limit as we have attained a bare minimum of motion over an extended period of time without babysitting or adding water. At most we check the vibe twice a day so it is important that it can run consistently if we thicken things up. We do use a piece of sheet plastic in between the lid and the bowl and while it probably does help with moisture retention the real reason we do it is so we do not have to clean the foam on the underside of the lid, ours still looks brand new. We have a roll of plastic sitting in the basement for this and in reality it is probably a lifetime supply. At the risk of oversimplifying: thinner for faster action, thicker for more gentle. I have tried more than a few thickeners and , so far at least, prefer borax in the vibe. 3) Moisture level. The UV-10 has the ability to run with very little moisture to quite a bit without washing the grit off of the stones and having this sit at the bottom. I had the chance to really test this recently as I was away from home for work for a couple of days and didn't want to stop the vibe so we intentionally set it up pretty wet. When I was next able to check it (about 72 hours later) it was running perfectly. There are limitless possibilities when you adjust this variable along with slurry thickness. These are primarily what I concern myself with. I have pretty much eliminated burnishing as I honestly do not see much of a difference, but when I did I preferred borax to Ivory. I would always use Ivory in our rotaries but in the UV-10 it would really increase the toroidal action and cut down on the poloidal to where it looked like cars going around a racetrack. Could be I used too much but never had this issue with borax. If we do anything now it is an hour run with straight water if we feel the stones need it. Al
|
|
braat
spending too much on rocks
Member since December 2016
Posts: 350
|
Post by braat on Jun 28, 2019 15:44:16 GMT -5
Good Job! Your photos convinced me I need to give this a try after I do some glass hounding! Care to share your UV-10 mods/adjustments with all us fellow UV-10 owners?? Sure, I'll stick to concepts as the recipes change based on material being run. Also, as mentioned above, this is a stock machine as after much experimenting I felt I could get what I needed to without touching the motor, springs, weights, etc. The main variables I focus on are: 1) Fill level. This affects speed and aggressiveness. Filling up to the blue line or somewhere close will give you a fast and harsh movement, enough to shake the paint from the walls. Would only use this for the toughest of materials and even then nothing that would spall, fracture, chip, etc. easily. Typically used only during first step. Conversely, filling the bowl ALL the way to the top rim (when running it will be sucked down some) will slow the action dramatically and be much more gentle. It is completely variable between these two points so experiment with levels in between to attain the speed and attack you want. 2) Slurry thickness. This is not necessarily the same thing as moisture. The UV-10 has the ability to move some mighty thick masses that can provide much cushioning. I think I have pushed ours to the limit as we have attained a bare minimum of motion over an extended period of time without babysitting or adding water. At most we check the vibe twice a day so it is important that it can run consistently if we thicken things up. We do use a piece of sheet plastic in between the lid and the bowl and while it probably does help with moisture retention the real reason we do it is so we do not have to clean the foam on the underside of the lid, ours still looks brand new. We have a roll of plastic sitting in the basement for this and in reality it is probably a lifetime supply. At the risk of oversimplifying: thinner for faster action, thicker for more gentle. I have tried more than a few thickeners and , so far at least, prefer borax in the vibe. 3) Moisture level. The UV-10 has the ability to run with very little moisture to quite a bit without washing the grit off of the stones and having this sit at the bottom. I had the chance to really test this recently as I was away from home for work for a couple of days and didn't want to stop the vibe so we intentionally set it up pretty wet. When I was next able to check it (about 72 hours later) it was running perfectly. There are limitless possibilities when you adjust this variable along with slurry thickness. These are primarily what I concern myself with. I have pretty much eliminated burnishing as I honestly do not see much of a difference, but when I did I preferred borax to Ivory. I would always use Ivory in our rotaries but in the UV-10 it would really increase the toroidal action and cut down on the poloidal to where it looked like cars going around a racetrack. Could be I used too much but never had this issue with borax. If we do anything now it is an hour run with straight water if we feel the stones need it. Thanks for sharing your clear and detailed explanation....it is appreciated! It occurred to me as I was reading it that I might have another go at some of the local stuff that didn't shine up very good. Also I'm going to start paying more attention to hardness before I just throw it in to see what happens. Anyways thanks again!
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 28, 2019 17:59:58 GMT -5
Sure, I'll stick to concepts as the recipes change based on material being run. Also, as mentioned above, this is a stock machine as after much experimenting I felt I could get what I needed to without touching the motor, springs, weights, etc. The main variables I focus on are: 1) Fill level. This affects speed and aggressiveness. Filling up to the blue line or somewhere close will give you a fast and harsh movement, enough to shake the paint from the walls. Would only use this for the toughest of materials and even then nothing that would spall, fracture, chip, etc. easily. Typically used only during first step. Conversely, filling the bowl ALL the way to the top rim (when running it will be sucked down some) will slow the action dramatically and be much more gentle. It is completely variable between these two points so experiment with levels in between to attain the speed and attack you want. 2) Slurry thickness. This is not necessarily the same thing as moisture. The UV-10 has the ability to move some mighty thick masses that can provide much cushioning. I think I have pushed ours to the limit as we have attained a bare minimum of motion over an extended period of time without babysitting or adding water. At most we check the vibe twice a day so it is important that it can run consistently if we thicken things up. We do use a piece of sheet plastic in between the lid and the bowl and while it probably does help with moisture retention the real reason we do it is so we do not have to clean the foam on the underside of the lid, ours still looks brand new. We have a roll of plastic sitting in the basement for this and in reality it is probably a lifetime supply. At the risk of oversimplifying: thinner for faster action, thicker for more gentle. I have tried more than a few thickeners and , so far at least, prefer borax in the vibe. 3) Moisture level. The UV-10 has the ability to run with very little moisture to quite a bit without washing the grit off of the stones and having this sit at the bottom. I had the chance to really test this recently as I was away from home for work for a couple of days and didn't want to stop the vibe so we intentionally set it up pretty wet. When I was next able to check it (about 72 hours later) it was running perfectly. There are limitless possibilities when you adjust this variable along with slurry thickness. These are primarily what I concern myself with. I have pretty much eliminated burnishing as I honestly do not see much of a difference, but when I did I preferred borax to Ivory. I would always use Ivory in our rotaries but in the UV-10 it would really increase the toroidal action and cut down on the poloidal to where it looked like cars going around a racetrack. Could be I used too much but never had this issue with borax. If we do anything now it is an hour run with straight water if we feel the stones need it. Thanks for sharing your clear and detailed explanation....it is appreciated! It occurred to me as I was reading it that I might have another go at some of the local stuff that didn't shine up very good. Also I'm going to start paying more attention to hardness before I just throw it in to see what happens. Anyways thanks again! No problem. I should have mentioned that the reason I was initially convinced I had to modify the machine is that when I first started using it I didn't think there was any way I would have success with anything other than agates or jaspers. I thought it was just to aggressive. I just needed to learn how to "adjust" it. They really should mention this in their manual as I find it to be extremely versatile. Al
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Jun 30, 2019 5:59:21 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing your tricks Rockindad. Increasing the hopper weight in the optimum location was also my most effective 'mechanical' modification in attaining a beneficial gentler vibe movement. As long as the vibe had the power to shake the added weight. Slurry/moisture is without a doubt the single most important path to efficient and protective abrasion but the thickening medium needs to be applicable and requires careful mixing ratios. Rotary or vibe. Industrial abrasion processes go to great extremes to use the finest and most applicable slurry materials and ratios for optimum grind rates and quality finish. Slurry rules because no space in the container need be wasted on protective media in most cases. Not to mention cohesive forces that speed abrasion tremendously. However a slurry failure can be disastrous both in vibe or rotary. Borax, some other soaps, colloidal clays and sugars can all be run for long periods of time without concern of failure if moistened properly. www.surfaceconditioning.saint-gobain.com/products/polishing-slurrieswww.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/polishing-slurrywww.globalspec.com/learnmore/materials_chemicals_adhesives/abrasives_abrasive_products/finishing_compounds
|
|
|
Post by Rockindad on Jun 30, 2019 8:14:20 GMT -5
Thanks for sharing your tricks Rockindad . Increasing the hopper weight in the optimum location was also my most effective 'mechanical' modification in attaining a beneficial gentler vibe movement. As long as the vibe had the power to shake the added weight. Slurry/moisture is without a doubt the single most important path to efficient and protective abrasion but the thickening medium needs to be applicable and requires careful mixing ratios. Rotary or vibe.Industrial abrasion processes go to great extremes to use the finest and most applicable slurry materials and ratios for optimum grind rates and quality finish. Slurry rules because no space in the container need be wasted on protective media in most cases. Not to mention cohesive forces that speed abrasion tremendously. However a slurry failure can be disastrous both in vibe or rotary. Borax, some other soaps, colloidal clays and sugars can all be run for long periods of time without concern of failure if moistened properly. www.surfaceconditioning.saint-gobain.com/products/polishing-slurrieswww.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/polishing-slurrywww.globalspec.com/learnmore/materials_chemicals_adhesives/abrasives_abrasive_products/finishing_compoundsPretty easy to do with the vibe as you can always sneak a peek without any fuss. The key is to hit the mark without having to babysit it all day, don't have time for that. At most it is checked upon waking up at 4:00AM and maybe once more around 6-8:00PM. I am not around enough to keep spritzing it with a spray bottle so getting it dialed in so it can run on its own is important. Al
|
|
jamesp
Cave Dweller
Member since October 2012
Posts: 36,154
|
Post by jamesp on Jun 30, 2019 13:30:26 GMT -5
The sugar(in vibe) was the best about not requiring spritzing. I'd let it run 30 minutes to an hour till sugar was completely dissolved. Occasionally had to add a bit of water to reduce thickness. Easier to add water to reduce thickness than to increase thickness by adding sugar and waiting for it to dissolve completely. Close the vibe and come back 2 to 3 days. Done deal.
But the sugar and water is carefully measured.
|
|
|
Post by TheRock on Jul 2, 2019 6:27:30 GMT -5
WoW that really looks good Daddy "O" right on!
|
|