Shot Blasting Machines

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Hi All,

Having used one tonight my desire to maybe have one has resurfaced

So, what are the pros and cons ?

Do you have to have an extractor unit etc

Are the Machine Mart ones any good or is a good second hand one better VFM ?

Any info would be useful, they do seem to do a job that sod all else achieves ?

Thoughts ?

Nige

[zoltan]

You need heaps of air, not pressure but CFM.

We have a hydrovane at work which runs a small blast gun in a flat pack cabinet we bought yonks ago from an ad in the back of Motoring news. The air volume isn't a problem ut we are really only playing with our gun compared to the blasting business down the road.

Yes to dust extraction: within minutes you can't see a sausage in the cabinet.

Our setup is ok for dusting off little brackets and brake calipers but we send any big stuff out as ours is an overgrown hobby set up and it takes ages to do bigger parts. We've used aluminium oxide but I've just bought a couple of sacks of bicarb of soda to try that on the seat frames for my Dormobile

[Wingnut]

I bought a small hobby one (about the size of a large fire extinguisher) to do the metal bits (chaise, etc.) when I built my 100". Very effective but also very slow. It can come as quite a shock after you blast something and it turns out not nearly as good as it first appeared!

I'm lucky, I keep and use mine at the local Coachwork's so air is no problem. You do need a great deal of it and it needs to be dry.

Peter

[pinny]

like its been said cfm is the biggest problem when i left school i done shotblasting for 3 years,we had 2 600cfm compressors to work 2 blast pots and various airless spray equipment like its been said the small ones are good but take a while depending on what medium your going to use sand,chilled iron,j blast,etc we used glass bead on alloy which gave a nice finish where chilled iron would tear it to pieces and dust extraction is a must our blast bay was 60x15 and with no extraction on after 30 seconds you couldnt see your hand in front of your face,chris.

[bow]

i use an old glass doored fridge, layed on its back with the door facing upwards, cut 2 holes in the side for my arms to go through and use H/D black gauntletts to protect my hands, bought a cheap blastpot type gun from machine mart, removed the pot and put a pick up pipe on the feed , then stick this into an old 10 gallon drum with the grit in, i use an old hoover for dust extraction, works well, cost sod all, and only have to stop every 10 mins to put the grit back into the supply drum,

a bit heath robinson i know, but cost nothing, and i get the grit for free from a company that do a lot of blasting and chuck the stuff once they have used it a couple of times,

cheap skate that i am

[integerspin]

We bought a large custom built cabinet and big road compressor, but we hated blasting so got rid of it.

We also had an extractor.

A few months after we got rid I found I needed some parts beading and knowing how complicated it was;-)

I bought a bag of bead and found an old plastic drum, I glued an opening metal window frame in the top of the

drum and cut a couple of armholes[i riveted some lengths of inner tube to them]. The gun I use is a lectrostatic[?] spot

blast gun with a length of tube to pick the bead/grit from the bottom of the drum. The setup has been used since 1989

and works fine. It needs a new gun as the bead has worn a hole thru the top of the body and the nozzle has virtually

disappeared.

The Guyson cabinet came with a pair of siphon guns, one was a cast thing and the other looked like it was migged

togther by a kid, from scrap, so a gun shouldn't be hard to make.

The pressure pot we had worked faultlessly and I never really looked at it, but there are plans all over the internet

for them. If you want to clean heavy parts quick you need a pressure pot and chilled iron grit. I keep seeing people mention bead and

aluminium oxide in pressure pots.

The extractor was very simple, a large box enclosing a huge mohair sock and a squirrel cage fan on top to evacuate

the box. The extractor sucked from below the grid and before my mate ran a bag of Jblast through the cabinet you never saw

any dust in the workshop,well a bit round the cabinet from opening the door and so on after the Jblast every surface was dusty/gritty.

Apart from from being able to see what your doing[try blasting grey paint of motorbike frames;-)], there is no air dusty coming out of the

cabinet into the workshop, the air coming out is fitered and can be squirted out of the workshop if needed.

With siphon blasting I never wear gloves.

someone mentioned Soda, where did you buy it? I wanted to try it.

[smo]

I have one of the small table top machine mart cabinets and actually its really handy, works well on small parts, but you are stuffed if it doesnt fit!!!

[roguevogue]

There's a proper extracted cabinet available from the same place you're getting your tig welder from Nige.

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Oooooh Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaally

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Nige

[gruntus]

Hi Fridge

I bought a Sealey one (£130-150 ish IIRC).

I found the biggest problem was keeping the air dry and stopping it clogging up the nozzles.

This was solved by putting an inline filtery thingy on the hose from the compressor which helped.

The other two problems were constantly replacing the viewing panel protection sheets (which go opaque through not much use) and also the dust which means doing things blind then having to open the viewing panel to see how things are going.

I didnt have any extraction though which may have helped out a lot.

HTH

Cheers

G

[Paul Wightman]

Oooooh Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaally

Hmmmmmmmmmm

Nige

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally !

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees Reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally !

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo 22222222222222222222222222 Ferrrrrrrrrrrkin Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig

Nige