Hi guys,



I thought that I would share this with you all, but first I wish to say that I'm not one of the amazing modellers who's work we admire, I more likely described as mediocre at best!



Just recently I was browsing through a forum that I hadn't visited for a while (F1M) and found that there was a number of them using a magnetic polisher, now I am a sucker for a new tool and firmly subscribe to the saying "The right tool for the job!" so I wend ahead and ordered me one!



So what is a magnetic polisher? I hear you ask and what will it do for me?



A magnetic polisher is a automatic device used in the jewellery industry to polish rings and other metal items by a burnishing process. This gets into all the small hard to reach places. Where a Magnetic polisher really shines (pun intended), in our hobby is for people who make kits with a lot of white metal parts, while these can be cleaned up by hand it is a tedious and more importantly (for me) very dirty job. Then there is the trouble of holding very small or delicate parts while attacking them with scotch bright or steel wool just to have them "ping" off into the far reaches of your workspace where the ever present carpet monster happily runs off with them never to be seen again! Now imagine just dropping all those tiny hard to hold onto parts into a bowl, and then 30 minutes later you have nice shiny parts without feeding the carpet monster!

Now most of the guys on the other forum (F1M) reside in the USA and they where recomending purchasing through Ottofrei, but because I live in New Zealand and we have 240v power not 110v this would mean that Otofrei only had very expencive options, over $1'100.00 USD plus postage for the size I need.



This clearly was not going to be an option, I can do a LOT of polishing for that kind of money! So I started looking on ebay to see if I could find a second hand unit cheaper, straight away I found many Chinese models on offer at much better prices but no matter how hard I looked I could not find any rewiews on them. After much searching I found this model on Aliexpress for only $265.00 including postage to New Zealand, for this kind of investment I thought it a worthwile risk!



After a long wait this finaly turned up yesterday.... now with the wife away overseas for a couple of months the most logical place to set it up was the kitchen




If you want to try this at home then there are a few extras that you will need, burnshing fluid and the steel pins. The pins are available in a range of sizes from 0.2 up to a masive 0.5, all in a 5mm length. I have started with the 0.3mm.

Now I was unable to find a seller on Aliexpress who could supply all that I needed, so I ended up getting bits from all over the show. Ottofrei in the US would be able to supply everything in one go for you lucky people who live in the US.



Here is a macro photo of the 0.5mm pins



Here is a comparison between the 0.5 and the 0.3 pins with a 1:43 wire wheel to give a idea on size.



Chris

For my test I chose to use a white metal 1:43 Ferrari 250 GTO that has been sitting on my "shelf of doom" for far too long. I had previosly brushed the body with a wire brush, but had not yet cleaned up the mould lines. All the other bits that I put into the magnetic polisher had not been touched.



This is what they looked like, notice the oxidized surface.

As a note, you would normally remove the pouring tabs and scrape the mould seams before adding the parts to the magnetic polisher.









Here are all the bits in the bowl, with hind sight, I should have left either the body or the chassis out. Then covered the parts with water and added a cap full of burnishing fluid. Note: I have used 200g of the 0.3mm pins.



30 minutes later I went from this:



To this:





I drained the bowl, washed the parts and the pins with water and put the parts out onto some paper towels to dry.







I love how you can now see the texture on the seats that otherwise would have been removed through the normal clean up process

So to sum up...

Could this be done by hand? Yes, but this was much easier, cleaner and faster.

Will this make me a better modeller? No, not likely, but I have a new tool so I'm happy!



Overall I'm very happy with my purchase, it's not for everyone but if you have a lot of white metal kits like I do then I think it is a worthwhile investment as the time saved in cleaning means more precious time available at the bench... looks like my carpet monster will be on a diet too!

Chris

Hi Chris

Now that,s an interesting bit of kit and its amazing how they recycle those old coffee grinders from 20 years ago into something useful . Every new toy has a learning curve and im sorry you had some damage but the results speak for themselves a nice clean finish that removes just enough to keep the detail.

Regards

Andy

Chris

That is an interesting piece of kit that I have never ever come across before.

I have seen the ultrasonic type of cleaners but never one such as this.

Pity about the damage but must admit it does really well.

Interesting toic and well done on your first medal

Hi Tony,

The IMCTH Mustang is superb, the white metal is cast by Model Factory Hiro and is top notch, hardly any clean up required before chucking into the polisher.

I have chosen the Mustang to build in preparation for the 1:16 Zero as it uses the same construction albeit in a much smaller and simplified form.

Chris

Here you go, a link to explain the Medals

http://forum.model-space...aspx?g=posts&t=2621


Andy