Looking For A Compressor & Blast Cabinet?

Michael J. Spangler

Michael J. Spangler

Joined
Oct 8, 2003
Messages
2,181
hey guys i'm looking to get a compressor for bead blasting and general tool use.
what should i go for? i know it depends on the cabinet and tools you plan on running.

it would be nice to get something from either wttool.com or from harbor freight. close by and HF has the 20%off coupons. let me know what you think.

roughly how many CFM should i be looking for at 90PSI?

thanks again guys. any suggestion o n good tools to buy to go with the compressor would rock also! thanks
 
hf has some decent 2 stage ones at the store by me- i think they had the large glass bead cabinet on sale this weekend-

home depot also had a nice 2 stage
 
alright so what's the difference between 2 stage and single stage?

and someone once said stay the hell away from the oilless models
 
You don't want oilless, and you want as big as you can afford. If you get one that is twice as big as you think you will need, it will be too small in a year or two. Besides, the CFM listed on a blast cabinet always seems a bit conservative, and the rating of a compressor is always greatly overstated. Recovery time and air tank capacity are big concerns when selecting a compressor and tank.

As to why a two-stage :
Lets pretend you are fighting a fire and you will need 100 gallons of water per hour to put it out. You could run back and forth to the lake with a ten gallon bucket every six minutes, OR you could get a friend to hand you a five gallon bucket every three minutes. Which one will deliver the water easier, and last longer.
Stacy
 
Stacy has the right of it (as usual) In my shop i've got a large craftsman single stage oiless with a 30 gallon tank, and the only reason I have that is I got it for just 100 bucks, the reality is, I'd love a compressor like, for example, the one Wulf has, multi stage, oiled, 60 +gallon tank, enough to run an air hammer and then some. The problem is a nice ingersol rand compressor like he's using runs over a grand =P
 
alright i got ya.... so any suggestions?

i'm really not looking to get into it too deep. i'm sure i'll find some uses for it but its basically just for bead blasting. so sinking over a gran into a bead blasting set up kind of sucks.

would something like this work out? i have a buddy with the 30 gallon from sears... and his does the job. not as nice as he'd like when blasting a bunch of knives..... but i think this has a lot higher cfm at a given PSI than his does

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92504

thanks again guys
 
When blasting volume is as important as pressure,the HF compressor is pretty good then look around for some old compressors that dont work and put an exta tank inline.
 
If money is not an issue and you have some $$ to put down. I'd suggest a CHAMPION Air Compressor and a skat blast cabinet if you want something that will last a long time.

http://www.tptools.com/p/1299,194_Champion-Compressor-and-Abrasive-Cabinet-Package-Specials.html

You want atleast 5 HP and more CFM the better. You could technically get by with a 2 HP compressor, but then you have to wait awhile and that could get frustrating.

You want a cabinet that has a really deep funnel so the media will fall down into the pickup tube area whereas some designs are quite poor like some of the Harbor Freight designs which get stuck on the side of the funnel as the funnel is too shallow really.

If you spend less $$ now, you'll just end up spending more later.
 
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