I have been asked to investigate the possibility of significantly reducing the sound of a rock tumbler in operation. Bought (not by me) as a gift for a younger member of the family and is now using it noisily and enthusiastically.
The canister itself is approximately the size of a 2 litre soda bottle cut in half and this sits in the device, and is driven by a rubber wheel which rotates against the canister.
One box inside another with sound insulating material to fill the space?
In message , Jake writes
Put it in the shed
My family & I used to run half a dozen large tumblers commercially in the 1970's (both commercial and home-made units).
You'll never silence them completely, and you need to make sure that the motors can get a good supply of air to prevent them overheating
- so boxing them in is a recipe for disaster / fire hazard.
Ours 'lived' in the old coal-shed, sitting on several layers of old foam carpet to reduce transmitted sound - but you could still hear them at the other end of the (150ft) back garden, if you listened for them. Have you got an outside shed / garage etc with mains?
Our tumbler drums were lined with rubber (could retro-fit old inner tube or carpet underlay, maybe ?). It's the stones rubbing against each other that causes the noise, but this action also turns them from rough rocks into rounded pebbles. The amount of water in the drum is also important
- insufficient water = more noise.
Hope this helps Adrian
Very good idea that.
If that's not possible for some reason I think the first step is to break the acoustic coupling between the device and anything else. A rubber bench mat like this -
A non-specific car footwell mat or a spare carpet sample might be some use. It's easier to get hold of but usually doesn't work as well as a purpose made bench mat.
Nick
Put it in the garage.
Brian
The stuff sold for soundproofing PCs ought to do it. Acousticpack or similar
BTW it may set like concrete if you don't keep the tumbler tumbling.
tow ply boxes sand filled gap and hermetic sealing.
Just one box, made of heavy stuff (3/4" OSB or chipboard is good). You can= line the inside with rockwool if you have it, and for neatness you could s= heath the inside of that with light hardboard.
Even better is to make a base too out of heavy OSB or ply, and to mount the= tumbler on that with some light springy suspension (even lumps of expanded= polystyrene). This reduces the vibration through the feet. Many tumblers a= re fairly quiet on their own (depending upon size of the cartridge cases), = but they transmit a lot of vibration into a table they're sitting on.
Only run it during daylight hours if it bothers the neighbours. There is little background noise at night and noises that are hardly noticeable during working hours sound deafening at night.
Buy a second one and run it 180 degrees out of phase with the first, so that the noise cancels out.
In message , Martin Brown writes
I can quote from experience, having built a prototype PC enclosure using plywood lined with the similar material used for sound insulation on boat engines.
I built an oblong sort of chimney, with constructions top and bottom that gave a convoluted path for the air intake and exit.
Taking the top one off allowed the front panel to be removed for access. After fitting an angled baffle inside to help the fan output point upwards, the temperatures inside the PC were lower than without the soundproof box, and the audio noise level outside the PC was massively lower measured on Cool Edit running on the PC.
The boat insulation was the all plastic membrane on a foam base as opposed to the more expensive lead on foam type. I bought offcuts from a boat jumble. The whole unit was baffle base then chimney containing the PC, then baffle air outlet. The base and outlet would have probably benefited from lining with Rockwool, or similar.
It worked extremely well, though I say it myself. I never built a production model because we found quieter PC's but I now know that the principle works well.
I understand the idea of sand filled cavities, but I think the membrane attached to foam is a better wide range absorber.
Hi. My wife complains whenever i clean my brass in a vibrating brass cleaner u know with corn media. Any ways i just turned my plastic bin upside and placed it over it. Cut the droning noise of it down alot. No more complaints. Ive just built a rotarty rock tumbler for my kid. Made sure i put a second idler shaft so i could run multiple drums side by side? and was thinking i would probably get a rectangle plastic storage tub and turn upside down over the barrels. But my motor is under neath in the open mounted on the frame so wont have to worry about heat
Why do you want to tumble rocks? Brian
To polish them?
Tumble polishing was a popular hobby in the 1960s. My mother made a lot of very well crafted and lovely necklaces and bracelets from tumble-polished amethyst, tiger-eye, rose quartz etc. I made the tumbler for her from a motor from Proops (remember them?), Plummer bearing blocks and alloy pulley wheels. The whole thing was rather larger and more powerful that the ones often seen for sale these days. It took a 3-litre barrel IIRC at rotating about 60 RPM. Too slow and the contents didn't tumble, they just slid around the inside, too fast and they centrifuged onto the barrel wall, stayed there and didn't tumble, either. The RPM should be such that you get a continuous crashing sound.
Starting from rough broken rock to highly polished 'pebbles' took about six weeks, changing the grit size to a finer grade, weekly. Grits 40-80-120-240-600 or Tripoli powder-tin oxide were the various stages IIRC, but it was 60 years ago! Don't ever pour the sludge down the drain as it's dense stuff and will quickly settle out and form a surprisingly solid blockage where you can't get at it.
She ran it on a solid concrete floor in the garage and detached from the bungalow, so no noise problem, but I imagine what you suggest could be OK, and if it's still noisy, try lining the bin with expanded polystyrene or similar sound absorber. If you're running it on a suspended floor, put more polystyrene under it to stop the noise being transmitted to and amplified by the floor.
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