The Armour Archive

I'm looking for recommendations for media that I could use to the deburr holes in some scales I have. The scales themselves are made from 1.25" steel banding and the hole size ive got in them are 1/8".
Ill be using a vibratory tumbler I have for this and I do have some ceramic media that came with it just wanted to get some more info on media choices. Thanks

Pat Marshall

A quick google search yielded some helpful info. Medium general purpose ceramic media has light deburring capabilities. The next step up was sf (super fast) with good deburring capabilities. Df (dense and fast) has agressive deburring capabilities. I would assume your tumbler came with a general purpose ceramic media. Try it out on a few and see how it goes. The df was listed as good for all steels and good for very hard alloys.

We use some sort of plastic media to do a lot of our deburring on aluminum, 4130 as well as stainless steels- but the tumbler is a bit larger than anything you'll use in your garage.

Fancy. I used play sand to debur the Ti plates for my lamellar. Made a rotating tumbler. They came out real nice. I've only relaced them once in six years.

You have 2 options that I know of.

Something witha corner radii of 140% of 1/8" (~3/16) will get deep enough in the hole to de-bur them without getting stuck. I recomend the smallest tetrahedral shape with radius corners that is slightly harder then you working material.

The second option is round media that will pass through the hole without getting stuck. 3/32 round would work and it should be slightly harder then the work piece as well.

Anything between these two sizes will tend to get stuck. Anything too soft will deteriorate without doing the job. Anything too aggressive will give you a very scarred up surface. The exact vendors you buy from depends on price, availability, shipping etc.

Luck!
Sean

What about a hand reamer? It's a long, tapering hand tool you simply put in the hole and turn a few times. An internet search found dozens of them.

I found mine at the local Ace hardware store. I think 1/8" is probably close to the smallest it can go...