Thread: Home Sandblaster

Years ago i was restoring an XR Fairmont and sent the doors off to be blasted, there was a medium shortage at the time so the blaster was using crushed apricot kernels.
Worked well without warping any panels although i did only get the door catch and edge areas done as stripping flat panels is easy by hand.
Sand is fine for small jobs done at home but most of the time a wire wheel on a grinder works better and quicker.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

apricot kernels.
Worked well without warping any panels although i did only get the door catch and edge areas done as stripping flat panels is easy by hand.
Sand is fine for small jobs done at home but most of the time a wire wheel on a grinder works better and quicker.

Walnut / apricot kernals are good because they do not build up heat, but are very dusty and can not be recylced. When you start looking into it it is amazing what they can use as abrasives every thing from dry ice, crushed glass to different garnets and even foundry slags. It is chosing the right medium for the right job. My local powder coater uses metal filings for the majority of his abrasive blasting.
Wire wheels / sanders are good aslong as their is not any fine pity. I have sanded down a panel then hit it with the sandblaster to get at these fine pits. Painter strippers also work well and quickly on large panels.

I wish I'd done this 20 years ago! Thanks to Shane (DoubleChevron) for the inspiration.

This trailer became superfluous to my needs once my Landy (a dropside tray) was finished. A nice flexible arrangement: I can store it in the shed and, when needed, pull it out with the Ferguson and position it in the doorway of the workshop with the exhaust blowing the dust well away from where I'm working.


MEDIA SUPPLY SYSTEM

I tried to obtain an out of date 45kg LPG tank (as per Shane) for a medium hopper but struck problems. It seemed people thought:

(a) I was making The Queen Mother of Pipe Bombs OR

(b) I was in danger of immolating myself by igniting residual fumes with my angle grinder.
So I went with 5 plastic 20 litre drums. Dirt cheap! They are individually pressurised (but only to 5-10psi) so as to make it easier for the gun to suck media up. Using standard 19mm black plastic irrigation stuff, each has its own tap. I was hoping to use existing bung holes but the stuff drained poorly. So I cut holes in the bottom (& lids) & epoxied the fittings in. When one runs out, I shift the air pressure to the next drum, turn off the tap on the empty one then turn on the full one. Each one holds almost 2 bags of Garnet.

I also included a purge system: all hoppers off, pressure applied to the purge pipe, gun trigger on and spray until the media is used up & the pipes are clean. That should eliminate the risk of wet media blockages.
The media in the drums will be air tight so will hopefully stay dry.
Having 5 drums means I can have different media (Garnet, glass, walnut shells etc.) loaded up & ready to go.

Re-cycling is by scraping & sweeping used media into bins & sieving back into the drums. I just use fly wire over the funnel and, yes OHS people, I always use a respirator!


THE GUN
A suction & mixing device.

Not too cheap because I wanted easily obtainable replaceable ceramic tips & a collection of air jets to suit the capacity of my compressors.


AIR SUPPLY
Three compressors with a total of ~25cfm. It's not REALLY enough. Ideally, I'll remove the baby one and add a 17-18cfm petrol compressor (~$650) mounted outside the workshop later. Big electric compressors need 3 phase power.


SAFETY EXHAUST

I used a $38 inline fan & 150mm storm water pipe. The elbow on the mudguard is not fixed so I can pivot the tail pipe (supported by a modified car stand) to suit the prevailing wind. The pipe also provided ports for the gloves.



MAJOR COSTS
9mm Plywood~$200 (Bloody Hell!)


Air fittings ~$150
Gun ~ $50

Perspex ~$50

Gloves $35/pair
Exhaust~ $100



The Industrial Chique designer lampshades were free- the barrel of a 20 litre plastic drum cut in half- & necessary. The 12W 1200 lumen lights so close to my eyes were almost painful.
The spray bench is an ancient base of a display gondola to which I welded scrap steel tube, rod & mesh.
Overall, I've spent less than what I would have paid to outsource the sandblasting I need to do but I also will gain a lot of time- no delivery/pick up & waiting. Plus, I can paint immediately so I don't have to pay for the stuff to be primed.

Some more photos to complete the story

This came as a "spare" wishbone for the Dauphine.


I can't use it but it was a suitable experiment.


This was ~ 5mins work. I could have done better but there was no point.


There was a big mastic type deposit that was tough but came off slowly.

If I were you I would buy a tungsten tip for the gun. It will set you back around $120.00 but you will not have to worry about replacing it for a very long time.

Fantastic

It's a brilliant setup isn't it .... If you find you have feed issues... you just add another couple of PSI above the blasting media.

The best bit is you can easily sweep up and re-use the blasting media. It's still easier to use something like a stripping disc in a 4" grinder to do the bulk of the stripping, then use your blasting cabinet to do the difficult too access areas.

It's amazing how much air you need Less air just means a smaller abrasive tip in the gun, and much slower stripping.

That arm looks like you used glass beeds, these are very gentle and slow. If you get some cheaper abbrasive on heavy heavy stuff like an arm it'll be much faster and work a lot better.

seeya,
Shane L.

I too recycle my medium, and top up when it starts to loose its cutting edge.
When I sieve my medium (through fly wire) I have a home fan setup behind me, this blows away alot of the real fine sand dust. This helps when you are blasting as you have alot less useless dust when blasting.