Polishing in a tumbler

Has anyone tried polishing ABS or PLA in a tumbler? Shapeways does this with their WSF material, using ceramic media and water. The SLS surface is a lot smoother to start with, so I am wondering how much a tumbler would knock down the layers of something printed at a .2 or .15 layer height.

Interesting idea I think I might try this at work next, but I think sharp corners and fine featuers would be lost.

Have you tried dunking the ABS in acetone? A friend tried this and the surface smoothed out quite a bit. I have also gotten good results by just sanding the part as well as using body putty (like the stuff used on cars).

I tried polishing PLA in a tumbler. Didn't work for me. Tried several media, but needs a long long time to see a result (6 weeks running constantly). The edges get quite smooth but anything else gets just a bit dull.

I was thinking about it then when that it took you 6 weeks figured what's the point of desktop manufacturing if it takes 6 weeks. Maybe only necessary if you're planning to sell it. I still like using acetone

I work for a ceramics manufacturer and we need to tumble all of our ceramics to remove sand from the kilns and sometime cut edge breaks onto the parts... interesting idea to try it on printed parts. We have lots of tumblers and an even larger variety of tumbling media. I think I am going to try this out sometime and see what kind of results I get.

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Ryan
Quality Engineer & Hobbyist
thingsandtrains.blogspot.com

I like acetone as well, but it isn't an option with PLA. My best results so far have been using a clear resin coat to fill in the texture, and sanding and buffing for something that needed to be smooth enough for molding. That was a part shaped something like a hockey puck which was relatively easy. Something like a figurine is more complicated to sand, so I was hoping for a mechanical solution. Acteone still needs a smooth surface, otherwise you just get glossy layer lines, and maybe an eggshell finish from uneven evaporation.

Fks-
Can you give us some details on what tumbling methods and media you've tried and what the results were like? For example rotary or vibratory, wet or dry, size and shape of media, etc. would all be helpful. I know Shapeways tumbles some of their parts with good results.

I uses a vibratory machine. Things i tried:

* ceramic media + SIC120 wet: Media is to heavy. The plastik parts tend to "swim" on top.
* Plastik pyramid (6x6mm) media + SIC120/240/400/800 wet: Works somehow, but slow.
* Wood cubes (4x4x4) + SIC120/240/400/800 wet: Works somehow, but slow.
* Wood cubes (4x4x4) + grinding paste (dry): Too slow, usable for polishing only.
* SIC120 dry only, no media: Works somehow, but even slower.

Using larger media might be faster, but grinding will be very unevenly.