On Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:41:24 -0700, charlie wrote:
"Buerste" ... wrote ....
"010 010" offonoffoffonoff... wrote ...
I'm curious about anyone who has experience with LARGE tumbling
operations.

We have a large volume (perhaps up to several tons a day) of oblong
ceramic balls that we would like to make more round. Yes, no metal is
involved but I've heard more about tumble polishing with ball bearings
and things rather than ceramics.

Would tumbling with, say, SiC or other abrasive particles accomplish
this reasonably efficiently. Is there a better process for very large
volumes?
....
I have a 10hp 6' x 4' tumbler that we polish wood blocks with. I don't
think that tumbling will change your shape much, just smooth and
polish.

it might round off edges a bit, but it won't make them round if they are
not already almost there.

To the OP -- how large are these ceramic balls, and how eccentric is
the oblong shape? By "more round", do you mean more spherical?

If these balls are a couple inches or less across, and off by less
than a mm or so, buy or make a bunch of marble mills, as shown eg
at http://home.earthlink.net/~jmcdohsd/id15.html

Or you might be able to set up a ball grinding pipeline using a
modified form of the cast iron rollers shown at 1:00 - 1:30 in
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0D-i_oKvKQ

--
jiw