I live in a Condo where my downstairs neighbor gets pissed because he can hear my case tumbler vibrating. I am sure it is a combination of the machine vibrating and noise of motor, cases being cleaned, any suggestions how to keep this quiet?

Power inverter.
put a few hundred watts worth of inverter in your car and run it there.

__________________
it just needs more voltage

You still owe us coffee

__________________
it just needs more voltage

Hang it from a chain attached to the ceiling.

__________________
Still Running Against the Wind

Set it on a triple folded towel.

__________________
S&W Accumulator

...on a counter, with the towel mentioned above. Maybe take it to work and run it there.

Buy a thick piece of foam (2" would work). Take a cardboard box large enough to cover the case tumbler and line the interior with the foam. Cut a piece of foam for the tumbler to sit on, place the tumbler on the foam mat and cover with the box. You will not completely kill all the noise but you will reduce it considerably. To maximize your results, you will have to experiment with various locations. Cerramic tile shower floors make a good platform for this method.

Run it when their gone.
Try it with towels under it.
Do you have a patio? Outside might be less noisy for them.
Fill it full of pennies for a couple of minutes. After that the noise of the brass and media will sound less noisy��

I hate always bringing this up, but cost of equip has a lot to do with it. The better units are pretty quiet. If yours has a solid lid, use it. That pretty much solves the brass sound issue. Rubber mat on your bench should further isolate noise. Of course you could move to a downstairs unit?
I have an Ultravibe. I can run it in the garage & carry on a conversation standing right next to it, pretty quiet. Some of the motors on the cheaper units sound like vibrators.

__________________
NRA Cert. Inst. IDPA CSO

Go to a carpet store and ask for a scrap piece of carpet padding. Put it under the machine. Don't run it next to an air vent or support that might go to the condo below. If you make a box, make sure the motor does not get too hot. More medium will muffle the noise of the brass.

In the early 80s when dot-matrix printers were the only ones available, I recall seeing an aluminum box lined on 5 1/2 sides with 2" thick acoustical foam (egg-crate style). Half of one side had a plastic or plexiglass awning-style door with a piano hinge on top. I compared the printer noise with and without the box inside a computer store and the sound reduction was significant. Doesn't sound too hard to build something similar to it with plastic storage boxes. You might also try using Styrofoam or closed-cell foam boards instead of the towels. If you really want to get fancy, you can make the box and use 2 layers of sound insulating materials with RC channels (resilient channels) and acoustical caulk to seal the edges. The key to minimizing noise is to reduce the amount of hard materials which transmit sound waves and vibration. Softer materials such as foam, Styrofoam (or towels as suggested) will reduce the amount of audible sound transmission.
All of these are cheaper than buying another condo. Another alternative is to take your neighbor shooting and get him hooked like us. Then he might help you reload and tumble brass.

Works for me.

Take your whining neighbor shooting.

__________________
S&WHF 366

Switch to wet cleaning with an ultrasonic cleaner. Or just load them dirty. They shoot just as well dirty as clean.

I clean mine every 5th use or so by putting them in a bucket with Dawn detergent and hot water. Swish them around, and let set for a couple hours. Thoroughly rinse and dry. They don't come out shiny, shiny, but they are clean.

Be careful about sitting it on a towel, air needed for cooling comes in under the bottom and a towel may block the air flow. A piece of thin fiberboard on top of the padding may work. I know I can hear mine buzzing away down in my kitchen.

__________________
Stay safe people!

It is almost Christmas. How about a box of foam ear plugs with a bow on top?

Seriously though, I worried about air flow with the towel when it was mentioned too. I have a soft rubber mat on my bench that mine sits on, but I can still hear it upstairs. I wonder if suspending it by the center bolt would work, or if that would change the way it vibrates?

Mike

__________________
NRA Certified Pistol Inst.

I don't think I have ever been more grateful to have my own shop than I am right now.

Will your neighbor give you some positive feedback so you can try a few different things? If he's just a jerk you might have to get a quieter unit. I have a cabela's one that has worked well if not overloaded. I was surprised how quiet it is.

__________________
Trucks and guns.

This works too. Used to clean them this way before I got a rotary tumbler. There are several different mixtures that work. Even a swishing in Hornady one shot or aanother sonic cleaner cleans and shines pretty well in a 5 gallon bucket.

__________________
Trucks and guns.

I live in a condo and just use a sonic cleaner. Now the noisiest thing I have is a reloading press, and three 13 pound cats zooming around. I do sizing and expanding while my neighbors aren't home. I have great neighbors and we're all considerate of each other.

When I don't want to use my tumbler,I throw a little bar keepers friend in a bucket of water and let my brass soak a bit after sloshing it around.Give it a good rinse and toss it on a towel in the sun to dry.

I was told to do this instead and it actually cleans cases better than tumbling as I was told but wont' get them as shiny

Build a wooden cabinet and line it with HEAVY acoustic ceiling tile or something equally soundproof. Just make sure your motor doesn't overheat. Just about any crack will let the sound out, but if you add a small fan in a wooden inlet duct and also install an outlet duct. If you fold the duct it will be better for sound. Don't let it overheat.

We had what are called 'rotaps' to screen materials in the lab. They are machines the shake the screens and beat them on top repeatedly with a hammer. They are noisy as hell. We put them in boxes similar to the above and it worked great. If you have room to build the box with more volume inside you don't have to worry about overheating as much. We never had a problem with ours and they helped everybody's migraines.

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

and put a 5 gallon bucket over it with a towel over the bucket.

__________________
That's just somebody talkin.

Ask neighbor when he is away, use one of those 24 hour light timers to start/stop your cleaner at a mutually acceptable time.

You can combine some of these suggestions until you get it under control.

__________________
"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Does your neighbor know why you are running a tumbler? I would think the fact that you are playing with gunpowder in your condo would upset him a lot more than a little noise.. Unless of course you reload elsewhere.

Take it to work, do it there.

I would say the less the neighbor knows about what you are doing, the better. Hopefully, he doesn't know already.

If he were to get mad and rat you out to management for having an ammunition manufacturing operation going, you will probably be fined or suffer some other unpleasantness..
Most people don't understand the harmless nature of reloading, and you would almost certainly get some bad PR out of the deal.

I would not include the neighbor in any of your shooting-related activities. That would increase the likelihood of word of what you do spreading, and by the time the news has made the rounds, there will be neighbors thinking they have a domestic terrorist living in their midst, bringing unwanted scrutiny. Not to mention increased risk of burglary, maybe even while you are home.

I was forced into having to live in an apartment for a couple of years 15 years ago because of school and work, and I made certain no one EVER saw me carrying a gun case in or out of the apartment, or anything that looked gun or shooting related.

Next time your neighbor complains tell her it's your significant other with her toys and you hope she understands.

Tell him that it's the guy above you, and the noise pisses you off, too.

Take up Tap Dancing. When he complains about it, agree to stop.
The vibrating will seem like nothing.

IMHO tumbling brass is one of those things that should be done outside for your own health. I wouldn't want all that contaminated dust from the media spread throughout the house.

__________________
Common sense isn't so common.

We used to live in a one-floor, ground-floor condo and I was concerned about annoying the elderly lady who lived above us so I used mine on our patio or front porch. Now we live in a townhouse with a full walk-out basement which is where my gun room now is so I just put it on a table on our patio right outside the French doors at the rear of the basement.

I'm with those who are concerned about outsiders knowing exactly what is in our home, gun-wise. Everyone knows I am a gun person from seeing me carry cased rifles and such to and from my vehicle but there's no sense in alerting them to an ammunition factory in their midst. Our HOA contract states "no flammable liquid products" and I don't need to give them any reason to drop the word "liquids" from that.

Ed

Sitting out here in farm country on 22 acres surrounded by fellow rednecks, most of us try to confine our 30:06 shooting to daylight hours.