Sand blasting?

D

dmelton

Joined
Jan 2, 2001
Messages
164
Just curious, how many of you makers have sand blasting cabinets in the shop? If so, do you find that you use it a lot?
 
I have a Horrible Freight floor cabinet. I've made a few mods too it since to improve it. As it comes, the pickup tube is pretty terrible, the light is worthless, and unless you caulk the seams you'll leak like crazy.

As for use, I feel like I've gotten my money's worth. I've used it for bead blasting a lot of titanium and aluminum. It may not get used every single day, but it's one of those tools that when you need it, you need it, and there's really not a lot of ways to do the same kind of job otherwise.
 
I use mine on just about everything... depends what you are making though. I'm running a barrel blaster with garnet abrasive.

Get a big 10+ scfm compressor and good dust collector, you need to collect air faster than you blast it in.
 
My compressor is only about 6-7 scfm and I don't have a dust collection system. yet.
 
dmelton said:
My compressor is only about 6-7 scfm and I don't have a dust collection system. yet.
Click to expand...

You will probably be good... hopefully those with that size compressor chime in. I only blast for a few minutes at a time to be easy on the compressor so you can never get too big of a compressor for blasting.

My dust collector bit the.... umm and I just sweep a lot/wear a respirator at the moment. It's a huge mess!
 
Yeah, dust collection is on my bucket list of things to add to the shop. I just keep finding other things to spend that time and money on. =)
 
dmelton said:
Yeah, dust collection is on my bucket list of things to add to the shop. I just keep finding other things to spend that time and money on. =)
Click to expand...

I had a 5 gallon bucket top vacuum for the blaster.... it lasted about 1000 knives and was about $20... a bit under powered but worth considering especially for a smaller setup. Mine fit underneath the blaster too.

I'm going to get a dust deputy next...
 
I have a "too small" compressor, and it seems to work "ok". It CONSTANTLY runs trying to catch up, but seems to maintain well enough that I don't have to stop very long if at all. My next shop upgrade will hopefully be a 60 gallon, 220VAC compressor with roughly twice the CFM.

As for dust control, I have a bucket top vac too, but only really turn it on when I'm getting ready to open the door. Otherwise, I'm pretty well sealed up. I pumped silicon into every seam and then went back over most of them after bolting everything together, though it's starting to dry and crack, so I need to redo it. I've also put some gorilla tape over the outer seams where necessary.
 
OT question...what media for titanium? I have glass that I use on stainless steel.
 
Well, I picked up the cabinet. It cost me 75$ and it was already put together. It needs new gloves so i'll be out a total of 100$ for an assembled cabinet. From what I've read it's a pain in the butt to assemble so that's a plus. I hear, in typical harbor freight fashion, that there is a bit of work i should do to it in order to keep media from flying all over my shop before using it. (sealing the cracks and crevices with caulk and or duct tape)

What's kinda funny is that I did not realize that you did not need a separate 'blaster' to run this kind of cabinet. Several months back I picked up one of these as an open box item

http://www.harborfreight.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/i/m/image_21016.jpg


Apparently, the cabinet allows you to recycle the media from the bottom so that you don't necessarily need the external blaster, like I have. I think I may use it anyway, just insert the hose/gun into the cabinet and blast with it.
 
You're definitely going to want to get some new lights for inside. I gut a "3 puck" light set (for under cabinets and such) from Home Depot for about $20 or less IIRC, and then put magnets on the backs so I could position them however I saw fit.
 
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