Cleaning On A Large Scale...

J

JeepHammer

Moderator
There is small scale,
There is production scale,
And there is industral scale.

I'm on the lower end of production scale, but well above personal small scale...

Each cardbard bin is between 250,000 and 300,000 5.56mm milbrass, and I usually do two bins when I tackle cleaning.

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I'M GETTING WET SHOES! LET THE BUBBLES FALL!!!

My old barrel roller cement mixer quit, but for under $300 this poly tub mixer works fine, just sloshes water/bubbles some.
I looked at the larger, better made vibratory brass tumblers that didn't do 1/10 the load this thing will do and take 10X the time.

The most filthy brass will come out clean (not polished) inside of an hour 60 to 100 pounds at a time!
Set the timer and walk away, it can wait on you for a change!

I use 40-50 pounds of magnetic pins, about a table spoon of dawn if they are really dirty/greasy, otherwise I've switched to Sun brand detergent intended for dish washer.
Sun produces less bubbles, but the brass doesn't water spot nearly as bad even with cold/hard water.
I also use about a tea spoon of "Lemi-Shine" to help bust the hard water issues.

After about 20 minutes I usually flush with clean water,
Not drain, just add clean water and flush out the bulk of the crud,
And I add some more detergent and about half a tea spoon of Lemi-Shine and let it run for another 20 to 40 minutes.

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I tried a dozen screens, shakers, separators to shake the pins loose from the brass...

Nothing I've found works easier than a bucket with holes drilled in it, just that simple.

Dump brass/pins in the bucket (or buckets) and put the bucket right back in the mixer.
Run the mixer about 3-5 minutes per bucket and the pins will wind up right back in the mixer where they are needed.
Couldn't be easier!

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This shows a $5 cement mixing tray/pan under the bucket, it catches what doesn't hit the bucket and any pins that fall directly through the bucket.
I actually made a custom aluminum pan for this, nearly $200 but the $5 pan fits better & works better.
Who knew? :)
 
:eek:OMG! To have that much brass would be awesome! I'd never get through it all.

Man you must shoot a lot Jeephammer. I love your method for removing and returning the pins back in the tub. The dishwasher soap is a great idea too. Thanks for sharing.

Ok now show us how you mass dry all them babies. I'm seeing a half dozen old ovens lined up..... :D
 
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Two things I should have mentioned...
About half a bucket allows pins/water to shake loose, full buckets don't roll/rattle the brass enough.

The second is clean water rinse & flush.
With the tilt of the drum you can drain off 90+ of dirty water without dumping brass, so I rinse in the mixer before dumping in the separator buckets.
One mixer load will half fill 4 or 5 buckets.

On really humid days, I built a tumbler bin and used heating elements out of an old cloths dryer.
It's an energy Hog' in a huge way!

All other times I put a 1/4" fishing net on an old yard hammock and just let them air dry or put a $30 Walmart fan under the hammock blowing upwards.
The hammock/net allows me to spread out the brass and to easily shake the brass around quite a bit.
Easy & cheap to let the sun do the work.

Some 'Don't Be Like Me' mistakes...

Steel wire will mark the brass and galvanized wire will corrode lines in the brass.
Nylon, brass or stainless is the only things I've found that won't leave tracks on the brass, nylon being WAY cheaper and working the best so far.

Never put Lemi-Shine directly on the brass, even if it's covered in standing water!
Either mix the Lemi-Shine into the water, or make sure the water is high and the mixer is running!
Otherwise you wind up with PINK brass! My wife calls it 'Rose' but it's PINK MAN!
Really PINK! (Did I mention it's PINK BRASS?)

You may 'Think' a 5 gallon bucket of brass is 'Cool', right up until you have to lift that sucker a half dozen times!
(Machine guns are cool, until you have to carry one 30 miles...)
I'm remarkably fond of half full, or a two wheeler with two full buckets stacked...

Wash/clean virtually everything!
Two reasons, the first being that clean SCRAP brass sells for triple what dirty brass does,
And clean brass is MUCH easier to sort!

You will lose your mind, and eyesight, trying to separate, inspect & sort dirty brass.
Clean brass & good lighting will make sorting a snap, and greatly assists with inspection.
With this volume, a case mouth inspection machine is worth it's weight in gold!

Don't just discard bent mouths/necks, the .300 Black Out guys are always looking for brass and the first step to .300 BO is cutting the neck off, so bent necks don't mean anything to them. Better than scrap price!
I lost probably $1,000 before I figured that one out...
Angle grinder with cut off blade & .300 forming dies and the case is back to premium price.

Don't worry about sorting by head stamp unless someone pays you for specific head stamps!
If they REALLY want specific head stamps they will pay for them.

I don't sell specific piece counts, way too time consuming.
I sell by weight with an approximate piece count.

Weight DIRTY won't be close! A 500 or 1,000 piece dirty can loose 10 pounds of crud in cleaning! Buying dirty range brass by weight, you need to know this up front or you will pay for a LOT of dirt!
I've bought a lot of expensive dirt...
 
A couple friends of mine reload ammo commercially and have been using a cement mixer for years. It's a fast, easy and inexpensive way to process alot of brass, also makes doing larger calibers easier.

Even the largest vibratory tumbler can't do that many large caliber cases at once, a cement mixer is also great for .50 BMG and 20mm. Both will either not fit in a tumbler or only a small amount will and then they're very hard on it.

They use a liquid cleaner, dump, rinse well and then pour in media to make them shine. I asked why they don't use pins and they said that they hate having to chase after them and time is money. They don't even dry the cases, they get most of the water out before dumping the media in. The media dries quickly and with all the motion of the case tumbling around the media doesn't clump.

I'm surprised that people who shoot alot and reload don't use this method.
 
Pins clean the inside of the cases squeaky clean compared to dry media.
I agree they can be a pain in the butt, it's the easiest way I've found to get the insides clean.
I could probably use chemical cleaners, but I don't want the enviormental issues.
Even the citris based stuff kills grass & stinks.
 
I do limited sales and limited outside work.
The local teenage shooting teams contract the brass prep work, and they keep me busy,
Don't really make very much on their brass, but the kids do most of the work and learn something.

And I sell reconditioned milbrass in bulk.
Usually fully processed, ready to load.
I will do some custom contract work, if there isn't a time constraint.
Cranking out .300 BO brass is an example, I simply wait until I have a few thousand case neck disqualified, then cut & form .300 BO from them.

Producing .458 Socom brass from scratch (coiled brass stock) is another.
There has to be a shortage of some kind to make small manufacture even slightly profitable since half million seems to be the break even point after tooling up.
And you have to find someone willing to contract for half a million, so I don't do a bunch of it.

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I tooled up for .22LR when the shortage was at it's worst, by the time I got the quality up to standard and the process running, the shortage broke!
That was a $50,000 experiment that didn't pan out like I thought it would, nearly didn't break even and I can't hope to compete with China or the big manufacturers...
I'm sure I lost money if my time/shop space were figured in.

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----
Reconditioned (Re-enter doesn't exactly fit for this) Range Brass, Milbrass,
Cleaned, qualified, annealed, lower case rolled, resized, trimmed, champfered & deburred.
I also grade brass, my LEAST favorite part of the process...
It's a part time thing I do on winter days, after the garden gets planted and before harvest, and in between regular job days...

Instead of sitting in front of the TV or computer, playing video games, ect.
Just 'Busy' work so I don't get fatter or even MORE lazy!
At this age, 'Lazy' creeps up on you from every direction, we are 'Supposed' to 'Slow Down' and get fat/lazy... I got the fat part down pretty good, but I'm fighting 'Lazy'...
 
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That's impressive.

I only do 100 cases at a time but for drying I use a home grown meat dehydrator/case dryer and use trays made out of "eggcrate" lighting panels bought at a home improvement store. Those might be a bit too large of mesh for large amounts of .223 but you can find heavy duty knot less nylon .25 mesh cloth at about 25 cents a square foot.

I can picture a refrigerator sized drying box with 25 or more racks for large scale operation. 100 cases in my small scale model takes about 1 hour at 140 degrees. I use a light bulb for heat, a bathroom exhaust fan for circulation and a clothes dryer over temp thermostat for regulation
 
Honestly, it depends on your objectives & volume.

The separator bucket knocks the pins & water off the cases, they are just damp instead of holding water...
At that point, you *CAN* but don't have to, throw them back in the drum and tumble with polishing media.

After about 3 hours they will come out polished, and they don't carry enough water in to effect the media.
Then all you need is a closed bucket and sift screen insert (commercially available).
Clean, dry, polished and ready to process.

I perfer to knock pins/water out & process, waiting to polish as the last step, getting case lube and primer pocket clean as the last step.
 
The all time best advise I can give is something that got passed to me a long time ago,

Ambition is like all things, good in moderation.
The only thing you can never have enough of is COMMON SENSE.

WASHING isn't hard, anything from a can or bucket on rollers to a cement mixer.

SEPARATION is often the hang up point,
*IF* you wash 15 gallons of brass, you had better have a VERY good way to separate the brass from the cleaning or polishing media!

Nature will eventually dry the brass, the 'Trick' is to prevent water spots if you want 'Shiny' brass.
That can be an additive to help water dissapate, or mechanical help like a heater, or an absorbent like a dry polishing compound.

I use all three depending on what stage of the processing I'm doing.

The point is, if your AMBITION takes charge, and you dump 200 pounds of brass into a 300 pound mixer, then add 100 pounds of water, and 100 pounds of pins,
Two things are going to happen...

The first is you are going to have to handle 200 pounds of brass & 100 pounds of pins SEVERAL TIMES, AND BUDDY- THAT'S WORK!

The next thing is the mixer isn't going to last long being overloaded.
It's only $300, but $300 is $300 and it takes a LONG TIME to earn $300!
Somehow the 'Savings' in reloading doesn't save anything!

Small scale, screening/sifting/separation is pretty easy,
Larger scale you had better work that one out in advance!

Ambition is good in moderation, but it often exceeds common sense!
 
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