I'm spending way too much of my life wire brushing and cleaning small to medium parts and then cleaning myself up after. A self contained blasting cabinet seems like the hot ticket for brackets other small to medium parts, but I've never used one. What can you guys tell me about buying and using them?
I have one, but haven't used it yet. A coworker gave it to me for use of my engine hoist. A typical 2'x3' Harbor Freight model.
His comments:
Dry air is a good thing. Humid air can make it clog up.
A lot of CFM is a good thing (the more, the better). His smallish compressor would constantly run and even then large parts would take awhile.
My plan was to set it up inside where I keep the humidity down. My compressor is medium-ish.
I bought one for $100 on Craigslist this summer. A used HF model that i used with glass bead on motorcycle parts.
I have a small compressor and the air dryer I have is way too small and restrictive to use.
that being said - I wish I would have bought one years ago. I used it to blast all kinds of parts and they were SO nice and the paint came out SO better when done.
It fit a 18" dia rear wheel. But they leak dust everywhere when in use and when opening the door. I tried to hook up a shop vac, the the compressor and vac together would pop my breaker.
You still want a line dryer to feed it. The sand/media will pick up the moisture and hld onto it pretty well.
Plan for some sort of way to switch/clean the media out for different types of cleaning. Glass beads for light cleanup and nice finish, more abrasive media for getting heavy rust and paint off stuff.
I have a HF unit that sort of works, but that is mostly due to the moisture issue and the fact that I tried to put an exhaust filter on the outlet and it has chocked down the through flow of air just enough to cause issues. The filter was added to reduce the amount of glass bead I was skating around on after a session. And the door seals needed some attention to work properly.
I absolutely love mine. Haven't used it in years, but it worked great when I needed it.
Pretty much bought it to refinish a set of Volks wheels. Definitely have to have a decent compressor to run it for a while. I was using a 30 gallon compressor (forgot CFM) and it was running constantly. I don't think it's very useable without positive ventilation (vacuum) running. It gets cloudy and soot creeps out of every air leak in the cabinet if not. I ended up buying better ear protection because I had the compressor running in one ear and the shop vac running in the other. Lots of noise.
Does anybody make a very one that I could use with lower CFM tank for doing carbs and things like that.
I don't have the CFM for anything else.
Harbor Freight is local, so that's good. My compressor is a 30 gallon Craftsman. Should sort of work? I don't mind waiting every now and again. Rig a shop vac to suck out the extra air, I didn't even think about that. Pick up a dryer when I get the cabinet. Then......experiment? I think I can do that.
I did some motorcycle carbs a few years ago with a homemade soda blast gun, using the baking soda I stole from the fridge.
Not my soda blaster pic, but it was the same thing, made with the blow gun that I had and some tube. Those are my carbs. I used the baking soda from the box and sprayed out in the open. Used 2 boxes of baking soda.
I used a 5 hp, 25 gal 7.1 scfm at 90 psi compressor from sears that has to be 20 years old.
Also - there is a youtuber named Hanna's bug that has a cool DIY line dryer for heavy blasting. She also ran a bunch of cheap small compressors together to get the flow she wanted.
I have this one. It works very well. It stays set up in the shop and I use is on a regular basis. I will never be without a blasting cabinet again and if I had space I'd have two. One with abrasives and one with glass beads.
(Not my cabinet but the same one from HF.)
BTW, I'd avoid blasting with more than ~40psi. I have learned that it will turn the sand into dust.
Which is bad on two fronts- you end up losing the sand quickly, and the dust is REALLY bad for you.
wearymicrobe said:Does anybody make a very one that I could use with lower CFM tank for doing carbs and things like that.
I don't have the CFM for anything else.
Pressure blasters are supposed to be a bit better - Eastwood's small one needs 10 CFM @ 90 PSI. My thought is to get one and use it inside a cabinet. You lose the automatic recycling of the abrasive, but for smaller parts it might not be too bad.
Rusnak_322 said:Also - there is a youtuber named Hanna's bug that has a cool DIY line dryer for heavy blasting. She also ran a bunch of cheap small compressors together to get the flow she wanted.
I've pondered starting a whole thread about her channel... It's fairly obvious her father (or somebody) is teaching her well, but either way, she's done more than I have. She makes me feel like a lazy bastard. Either way, she's good in front of the camera and her episodes are entertaining to watch. "What would Chris Hemsworth do?"
My dad has the larger harbor freight one and it does some amazing things. It isn't very well sealed, so wear a respirator. He's got a smaller compressor and we actually managed to burn it up doing a giant pile of suspension parts. I think we were over the duty cycle a little bit! I got buckets of blasting media at Grainger and I've rented gasoline-powered compressors for when I have lots of stuff to blast. The media I use has always been glass beads and there's no line dryer on his compressor, but there were never any problems in that regard.
I've tried to build that soda blaster that was mentioned and had zero luck with that. User error, probably.
In reply to wae :
I understand soda blasting is good for paint removal, but not so effective for rust removal.
The HF ones work. You'll probably want to upgrade the gun, caulk anywhere there's a seam in the metal as they have tendency to leak., and run a vacuum for positive ventilation with one of the super high filtration dust bags in it (ones designed to collect fireplace ash work really well.) The dryer is a good piece of advice too.
Most of the media leakage will be from where the cabinet opens up to put the part in. I suspect some good rubber foam would help there. Down draft or direct pressure tables are the hot ticket but they're spendy. You can however pick up second hand professional quality downdraft tables for the price of a new "Industrial Blast Cabinet" from Harbor Freight if you troll CL.
They put the equivalent of a lot of hard miles on your compressor
The dust is not really good for you if using sand
They really do benefit from a good air drier.
The (cheap) bench-top models leak dust all over the shop and the window lifespan is measured in minutes of use
You are going to need a light(s) with a protective shield that does not abrade, inside the cabinet.
You need to rig a vacuum cleaner to the booth to keep dust down so you can see anything.
If doing the vacuum cleaner thing, run it through a water-trap first so that your vacuum cleaner last longer.
I took the gun out of my benchtop, and when I want to clean up anything with a lot of nooks and crannies, I just put the tube into a bag of sand and do it in the backyard. For a lot of things, especially if they are curved like tubes or rods, the wire wheel is just as fast.
Have you looked into molasses tanks as a method to de-rust stuff yet? Some before and after of the stuff
On a different note, a friend was showing off the results from a vibratory bowl thingie that he got from HF and while it was just nuts and bolts, it was impressive how good a job it did. Wonder how far up the concept can be scaled?
Water trap
Ian F said:Rusnak_322 said:Also - there is a youtuber named Hanna's bug that has a cool DIY line dryer for heavy blasting. She also ran a bunch of cheap small compressors together to get the flow she wanted.
I've pondered starting a whole thread about her channel... It's fairly obvious her father (or somebody) is teaching her well, but either way, she's done more than I have. She makes me feel like a lazy bastard. Either way, she's good in front of the camera and her episodes are entertaining to watch. "What would Chris Hemsworth do?"
It's already here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/hannahs-bug/124231/page1/ . Unfortunately there haven't been any new Hanna's Bug episodes for over a year. I do hope they keep going, but I'm slowly losing hope!
Aluminum oxide instead of silica sand for blasting tough stuff, and I would never use one without a dust collection system (shop vac), partly because of the dust floating around, but more because you can't see a damn thing inside the cabinet. Make sure you can buy replacement glass easily. I change mine shockingly often.
In reply to dculberson :
Ah... I recently started watching after someone referenced the tent reinforcing video in another thread. I haven't looked at all of them to see when the last one was posted.
As much as Edd China, I think she should meet Jessie Combs.
My sources tell me that tempered glass can be used instead of plexiglass and it will resist going cloudy for some time. Might explain how the home-made micro-van window holds up.
If so, then I would consider building my own cabinet using whatever the cheapest or most common side-window you can find in the scrapyard.
I use tempered glass in mine and still change it pretty regularly. I really depends how much media bounces back at your face- Brake rotor hub mounting faces are worst- you are blasting into a cup.
I put the plastic protectors on mine and change them every couple of months. The glass is still perfect.
Toyman01 said:I put the plastic protectors on mine and change them every couple of months. The glass is still perfect.
I wonder how something like 3M clear security film would do on the inside of a cabinet. You can buy a roll of that (or ebay special) for super cheap and it'll last forever.
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