Buffing a 50" long 14" dia tube

[boottmills]

My company has been sending out tubes for electropolishing when we can't handle the size for buffing them ourselves. I have been tasked with finding an "inexpensive way to do the buffing in house" but I am worried about the safety of our buffing wheel operator. I had the idea of a lazy susan on a small manual scissor lift with a chuck inside to hold the tube. We were also tossing around the idea of using a strapping system from the ceiling and holding the tube that way. Either way I have safety concerns when he's leaning into the tube to buff with the wheel turning at 3000 RPM. One of our lathe operatiors mentioned throwing it on a lathe and mounting a buffer to it. I was hoping that someone may have some thoughts on these, or maybe some other suggestions or ideas thay could toss my way.

Regards,

Boottmills

 

[TVP]

I think the lathe option is definitely worth exploring further. You can use a steady rest (Atling, Kitagawa) to provide additional support if the tubes are long and have problems with deflection. There are many kinds of chucks specifically developed for holding thin tubes sections without distorting the cross-section.

 

[berkshire]

The company I used to work for, had a home made lathe type set up, that rotated the tube at about 25 rpm.
The device used core plugs to hold the tube on the machine, and the operator just stood next to it with a hand buffing machine.
B.E.

The good engineer does not need to memorize every formula; he just needs to know where he can find them when he needs them. Old professor

 

[MiketheEngineer]

Ship it to India or China and have them do it

 

[Latexman]

I thought electropolishing was done in a temperature controlled bath?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electropolish

If so, why does anyone have to do continuous manual labor? Or, are you talking about the preparation (progressively finer finishes0 prior to electropolishing?

Good luck,
Latexman

 

[boottmills]

We use a buffing wheel when we don't electropolish for our smaller tubes. The idea is to use the same process for our larger tubes.

Boottmills