Dry Tumbling with Corn Cob Grit

Stamped, cut, machined and otherwise processed parts often contain cutting oils and lubricants and need to be cleaned. These parts also have burrs and sharp edges that may need to removed.

The steel parts pictured on the left are dirty and have light burrs that need to be removed. A typical process would simply demand a mass finishing, tumbling process with a Ceramic Media to degrease the parts and remove the burrs in a wet process. The challenge with these parts is the shape – long, flat parts. In a wet process these parts will stick together to form ‘sandwiches’ and will not be cleaned and will resist deburring.

The solution is to dry tumble the parts with Corn Cob Grit. The Corn Cob Grit media will remove and absorb the soils (note clean, brighter parts on right). In a barrel tumbler, with a high ratio of parts to media, the part-on-part tumbling action will remove the burrs. The Corn Cob Grit can be separated from the parts efficiently with a simple wire mesh screen. The dry tumbling process also eliminates the need to dry the parts so they are immediately ready for any further processing.