Polishing Aluminum?

[Rhandhali]

I've got about 5000 12 gauge 1.5" round aluminum blanks that I've got for a stamping project. The blanks I am looking at getting come rough, they still have the little rim where they were stamped out of a giant sheet of metal and the surfaces are kind of scratched up and unfinished. With the quantity I'm looking at deburring and polishing these guys by hand isn't going to get me anywhere.

Does anyone here have experience with deburring and polishing aluminum parts? I was looking at getting a reloading tumbler (I want one anyway) and doing batches, or rigging something up with a 5 gallon drum and some rollers hooked to like a dryer motor or something for larger batches.

I'm not planning on anodizing or anything, just cleaning them up to look nice and then stamping them.

 

[edman87k5]

I have never tumbled aluminum, not sure if it would work. If you are attempting it, a small concrete mixer may be the easiest setup. The only way I have ever polished aluminum is with a buffing wheel. It goes rather fast if you have the right equipment.

 

[Request Dust Off]

Call around to some machine shops and see if you can just sub it out. They have industrial deburring systems.

 

[DAVE_M]

Call around to some machine shops and see if you can just sub it out. They have industrial deburring systems.

+1

Polishing aluminum is a pain in the butt.

 

[_Big_Al_]

I tried some high end billet parts for a drag bike clutch setup in my tumbler, cleaned them up but nothing close to polishing was achieved. There is a way to chemically polish stainless, Defiance machine does it to there rifle actions, but I don't know if it would work for aluminum. The guys at Defiance are really cool though and could probably tell you if its possible.

http://defiancemachine.com/

 

[sgt z]

How many processes? deburr one side or both then polish one or both sides. You may want to have a print with specs or you could end up with crazy deburr grinding chamfers that create more burrs and booboos than you started with because a shop will have the least skilled worker performing as fast as he can. These are just my own experiences, yours may be different.
A vibratory deburr machine uses specially shaped stones to deburr and polish and may do what you want. I worked at Gulf South Machine in Pochatoula and they had one.

 

[Rhandhali]

How many processes? deburr one side or both then polish one or both sides. You may want to have a print with specs or you could end up with crazy deburr grinding chamfers that create more burrs and booboos than you started with because a shop will have the least skilled worker performing as fast as he can. These are just my own experiences, yours may be different.
A vibratory deburr machine uses specially shaped stones to deburr and polish and may do what you want. I worked at Gulf South Machine in Pochatoula and they had one.

Thanks for all the help, I'll start making the calls. The dies will for my project will be coming in soon so I want to get these blanks sorted in pretty short order. I did find some stuff about using like plastic pyramid media, which is pretty cheap, to deburr. I was going to do a home made rig with a cheap harbor freight drill, some 2x4s, rollers and a 5 gallon bucket but I'll call around and see what it costs for someone who already has the equipment/knows what they're doing.

I got the blanks from new orleans mint, I would imagine they deburr their own blanks at some place but for some reason they don't sell deburred blanks.