Marble polishing

[schmoozer]

Found this website to make your own machine🤔

http://theglassmarble.com/sphere grinder.htm

[wvrons]

These work great, but takes a lot of time. The small motors were hard to find for a while. If you are going to do one inch and larger marbles like big handmades. You will need much larger motors. With the large marbles these small motors will heat up and die.  Another thing to be careful of is cross contamination. If using a course grit and change to medium or fine grit. If everything is not cleaned very well. If just a few pieces of the course grit get carried over whlie doing medium grit. It will be like going right back with the course grit. The sure way is to have three polishers. One always for the course, one for medium and one for final polish.  These will clean a lot of marbles up well on just final polish with the wood dowels and very fine like powder polish compounds.  For course grinding, deep chips, deep scratches, us pipe fittings and course grinding compound. For medium shallow hips, etc. use plastic pipe fittings and medium grit. For final polish use wood dowel rods and very fine polish grit. The final polish removes almost no glass, Just smooths it very slick. Each stage can take ten to twenty minutes per marble. If not adjusted correct for each marble. The marbles can fly out hard. Just like with a marble machine rolls. The marble has to spin in all different directions constant(always)to stay round. 

[Alan]

The motor source states that they haven't sold that motor (or an equivalent) since 2017.

 

[Shamrock Marbles]

If you are inclined to build this machine, one can currently find substitute gearmotors at Grainger or McMaster-Carr. These will not be identical 1:1 replacements nor will they be cheap.

Grainger 52JE35

McMaster-Carr 6142K49

The MC unit is beefier than the GR unit.

[Shamrock Marbles]

Additionally...

The website "The Glass Marble" is Bruce Troeh's.  Bruce has been a perennial demonstration artist at Moon Marble's Marble Crazy.

Bruce T. basically added the detail design from Craig Snider (Spara50) to his website.  You can see an email exchange at the bottom of that page.

The genesis for the plans (I believe) came from some details shared by Leroy Johnson, but Craig fleshed it out into a complete DIY Instruction Kit and shared it.

I am open to any correction by Craig (or others).

John

 

[mibcapper]

hand made from a fellow mibster. and ..... what an experience. once set proper ... and that ain't to easy as you change sizes ..... you can see and adjust to how much to take off ... to polish ..... depth of color .... whole bunch of sights with the marble. getting the proper tension is the key. newer models look much easier to operate. and ... expensive. i like doing the grinding and procedures. 2 going at same time keeps you on your toezzz ..... bill