Home made vibratory tub.

**AdrianH** · Feb 21, 2016, 04:40 PM

Vibratory or Finishing Tub used for steel

De-burring can be a pain at times, especially if you have to get into nooks and cranny's! Large areas can generally be cleaned up with a flap disk or wire wheel, file, emery cloth etc.. But sometimes to give a smooth finish, remove sharp edges a vibratory tub can be a great help. So here is a small unit I made up.

The tub was made of 3mm thick end panels and 2mm thick body in mild steel, I plasma cut the end shapes to match a general idea of the size I wanted, together with some angle iron bend tacked welded the tub together. I used ratchet straps to pull the shape in the 2mm steel, even this took some effort. Luckily it all held long enough to get some decent welds in there.

More angle added to form the basic box shape and stiffeners added to the sides of the tub.

Where the side hole is the angle was ground away and a chute added, this is for emptying of media at some point, it means I do not have to pick it all out.

The start of the motor frame and the shaft for eccentric weights to make it vibrate.

As you can see in this picture, the weights are basic lumps of steel welded to rings that will fit on the shaft, some M6 button heads to tighten against the shaft to stop them moving.

The picture below is the drain, a few bits turned on the lathe and TIG welded together, filed to approximate the contour of the base of the tub. this was welded in place and then holes drilled to match.

The tub sits on 6 coil springs and these sit on some large washers and tuned nylon sections bolted to the frames to keep them in place. The picture above shows the drain from the tub, this will go into a container for fluid, some sort of filter and pump to put the fluid back in to the tub and wash the parts as they vibrate. The motor drives the shaft with two belts and the motor section is spring loaded to allow for movement and tensioning.

To try and protect the tub it has been lined with conveyor belting and silicon sealant used to try and keep the lining in place. Hopefully this will wear before the metal.

I used a triangular section ceramic media for the de-burring process, not sure if the best thing to use, not cheap, did at one time try pea gravel, but it is a lot denser then the ceramic so would need a lot more weight for the same volume.

There is a video of the unit in operation on Youtube.com, here is a link:-

A later upgrade to the tub included a 3 phase electric motor and variable frequency drive so I could vary the speed of rotation and it also provided timers so I could run for a fixed time and then switch off.

There are also metal panels now in the base back and sides of the motor frame, this helps to stiffen the section up, need to make a hinged and latched front panel for safety.

Adrian