I use ceramic spheres for my polishing medium. the sound is loud but not too bad. If the house is dead silent I can sometimes hear it through the wall the bedroom shares with the garage. I usemeguiars mirror glaze polishing compound, I get a better polish then using cheaper polish. I don’t know anything about cleaning up the inking, but I have used sharp edge and rounded edge dice in my polisher and have had no issues with rounding off. If you have arthritis or don’t have time to do the polishing I strongly suggest getting a tumbler. You will however still have to do the sanding, even if the face looks smooth coming out of the mold, the tumbling will reveal the tiny imperfections. I used to just hit it with the 3k sand paper but now I’ve been going up to between 5-10k just to be safe.