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Black Oxide using a tumbling barrel

I am new to the process of black oxiding and I have a question. Right now we place small parts in a basket and put them into our black oxide tank. I was wondering if we could put these parts into a tumbling barrel and black oxide that way. We seem to get a lot of nesting the way we do it now and I thought that if we tumbled them we could eliminate this problem. I would appreciate any help I could get. Thank you very much in advance. Terry

Terry Murphy
- Bridgeport,CT USA
2000

Terry - Absolutely! Using a barrel for black oxide is a great way to process parts. Although you mention it in relation to using a basket, nesting can sometimes be a problem with barrels too. It will take some experimentation on your part to find the proper load size and/or mixture of parts to minimize nesting. Good luck!

Dan Brewer
chemical process supplier - Gurnee, Illinois
2000

Tumbling barrel is a term normally used for mass finishing, IE: deburr. Barrel plating is a more normal term. Barrels are frequently used for black oxide on parts that can stand the repeated banging together of the parts. Look in the metal finishing guidebook for more information and vendors.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida
2000

Barrel black oxiding is very common and quite simple. Barrels can be electric driven or manually cranked. The manual being much less expensive. We recommend the barrel be made of cold roll steel. Nesting of parts can be reduced significantly if not eliminated completely with tumbling barrel process.

Tom Walen
Springfield, Massachusetts
2000

Outside of using barrel or baskets for e-coat mass finishing of small parts does anyone know of any other methods such as conveyor type machines. Please advise.

Jack Lofstrom
- Harvey, Illinois
2000