The use of lava rocks continues to appear to be a very good, economical, novel solution.
Last night, I was able to obtain a very uniform, 1/32" radius on all edges of 25 pieces in 2.5 hours in the extremely small Harbor Freight tumbler. This was using a small amount of water (maybe 1/2 cup) and about 1/2 of the tub full of previously used lava rocks with a small handful of new stones added.
The downsides to using the lava rocks are that the rocks wear pretty quickly (actually not necessarily a disadvantage) and the parts are left with a red tinge. The color is easily removed with acid, but that produces waste and might be a big problem - jury is still out on this aspect. Again - I am NOT anodizing, so surface contamination is not an issue for these parts. If they were going to be anodized, I would not use lava rocks for deburring!
The benefits are that the rocks are dirt cheap, very light in weight and work extremely fast.
Scott
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