Metal Casting Zone

Its time to tumble up some more bentonite, Larger furnace means larger castings wich needs more casting sand. This is a cheap and easy rig to tumble the litter and pulverize it to powder. Its running right now and im curious how long it will take.
the rollers are from old printers and are mounted in mdf with no bearings. Its running well if it does a good job I will make one in aluminum.

What do you have inside, some ball bearings? I use a little ball mill at work but I can only do about 5 oz at a time, takes forever. I tried an old blender, it did Ok. It took forever too and I had to keep sifting and putting the big chunks back in.
Yours should work great and you can let it run and not watch over it.

I forgot to mention it has an internal roller in it 3" solid aluminum the length of the coffe can, that should do the trick

Yes, That should do it.

i dont know about kitty litter but ive recently used my "muller" and my 4 inch pipe crucible it turned half to dust. i shifted it to get out the big bits. the big bits i put in a 4 litre container with water and make a "slip" if my sand feels "gritty" i mix some slip into it instead of water. i also found that the high speed of the muller just caked the side of the pipe and i was back to square one. its amazing just where does the sand go???? i had two drums now i only have 1 1/2 so i will be making up some new. i store my sand dry! its lighter to shift (yes i have wheels on it! lol)ive found that by mixing from dry every time i can get my sand just right! my sand isnt always dry. so when ive added too much water or if it gets rained on its handy to have some bone dry sand that can be mixed in.

Well I let it run for 2 hours now and sifted out about 1.25 lbs of very fine powder.
slow but not too bad, beats paying the shipping on a bag

Maybe if you put 2 Al bars in it. Get a little shearing action going.

They don't drill wells in DE? I got 50 lbs of extremely fine (Dust) Bentonite for $10 from a well supply store. Ya might want to check it out.

Firestix wrote:
They don't drill wells in DE? I got 50 lbs of extremely fine (Dust) Bentonite for $10 from a well supply store. Ya might want to check it out.kept it well sealed up and dont let moisture into it otherwise it will "cake" and then you will have to "mill it" back to powder.

Keep it dry? ... in the hot muggy, sweaty, steamy back yard of Camp Lejeune, NC (a.k.a. Camp Swampy) Ya gotta be kidding me. Although I do have it in a bag ... and then the bag is put into a 5 gallon bucket with a lid.