I am wanting to debur some aluminum pins I made and prep them for anodizing. I have a small toriod tumbler (the kind used for polishing brass firearm casings) and some walnut shell and corn cob media. The walnut shell seems to not even touch the surface after sitting in the tumbler for 1 or 2 hours. I was wondering what media to use to knock off the sharp edges (no burs on the actual part, just sharp machined corners) or if its possible to do it in this small of a tumbler. I might just end up hitting them with a buffing wheel like I did a few previously.

with walnut shell media even for brass to be shinny takes an overnight stay in the tumbler.

I use ceramic media you can buy from any machine tool supplier (like MSC or KBC or ENCO) but the down side is it isn't made for taking off burrs or hangers but just the sharp edges.

If you leave a part in long enough to get all the sharps off of a NON-deburred part you will have a very rounded piece of junk when your done.

corncobb with a polishing compound will work too but you will have to tumble them for like 24-48 hours. But they look really purty when done.

Tumbling parts takes alot of experemintation to get right and I personaly wouldn't experiment on good parts.

We do a lot of tumbling of different materials in both vibratory and barrel type machines. For aluminum, we generally use a plastic media for pre anodize applications. This will leave a matte finish that will look great when anodized. It's not a very aggressive media so it won't hurt the aluminum. It is possible to overtumble, but takes a very long time.

good luck