DIY Blasting cabinet. Anyone build one recently??

[jrevillug]

Jul 9, 2014 11:57:31 GMT dadangerman said:

I built myself one for all the the restoration on parts of my spitfire, i used an old scaffolding bin and made a box with mdf. best tool I have in my unit and I use fine crushed glass at £7 per 25KG

Does glass not put you at risk of silicosis? This is one reason that nobody sand-blasts any more.

We've got a proper blasting cabinet at work, and it's a finnicky thing - one minute it's going great guns, the next it's barely flowing at all. At least it's linked to a sodding great Hydrovane compressor so you don't have to keep stopping to let the compressor recharge - anything you can run from a 13A plug simply won't cut it. ;-)

[dadangerman]

I will get pictures on the weekend when I'm down unit, its pretty basic I only used the scaffolding bin as it was there,
have the base and rear in metal to take most of the grunt from the sandblaster.
I think it is sand which causes the silicosis mate, crushed glass is used by people who do exterior walls etc so must be partially safe, plus its all contained within my cabinet.
I've found my siphon gun is better in the cabinet for doing my bits as it just works as it should, my pressure pot is ball ache, I cant get it too run effectively

[Sweetpea]

A bit late since you are already underway but I made this...





I wanted it small and light weight. Gloves come from screwfix. About £3 I think. Glass bead and blaster from Machinemart.
Initially I just had a piece of hoover bag in the side of the box as a filter but it didn't work. Clogged up in seconds. Then I wondered about a proper hoover but I'd heard that the dust clogs hoovers badly so...



The grey hose goes to this...



...Which sucks air across the top of the T piece and creates low pressure like a chimney. Dust gets taken up the chimney but the bead falls back as it's too heavy.

There is a glass window in the top which now need replacing as it's misted up.



You have to stop regularly to refill the blaster with bead but that gives my compressor a rest.

James

[bobblegut]

This months practical classics magazine has a guide to making your own like above .

[varelse]

I know this is a bit late but was trolling the technicals and came across this and was curious to see what others had come up with. Figured I'd add in my two cents.
This was our solution, courtesy of a 2 door fridge. Yes, it's heavy and big, but I can fit the wings of the Minor in it.
And space is not as much of an issue.
retrorides.proboards.com/thread/157923/?page=3

[droopsnoot]

I've been playing with blasting recently. For doing a front subframe, I got a big plastic bag, put a pipe in the far corner as an exhaust, used a load of spring clamps to close the rest, then just stuck my arm in with the blasting gun. Worked very well, basically transferred the 25kg of medium glass from the bag it came in to the bigger bag, via the subframe, and cleaned it up quite well in the process.

For work on the bodyshell, I've been taping another bag around the affected area, leaving one corner to drop the used media into a big plastic tray, and just holding it around my arm. Hard to see what's happening, but fortunately I don't have a lot to do. I'm using a 50l v-twin compressor, so I do spend quite a lot of time waiting for it to re-charge the cylinder, but that gives me time to open the bag and see where I need to do next.

It's not foolproof, not dust-tight and I do end up sweeping quite a bit up off the floor, but then I can't do anything else on the shell as there isn't enough needs doing to make it worth taking somewhere for a complete blast, with all the risks of damage. A mate has a proper Guyson cabinet and a decent compressor that he kindly lets me use for smaller pieces, but it's still not airtight and even with recently-cleaned filters it's hard to see what's going on after a minute or two.

[edwell]

I've been contemplating something like this



anyone had any experience? Seems to alleviate a lot of the issues with air blasting i.e. dust and needing a massive compressor

[Marshall]

Jul 1, 2014 16:16:06 GMT chairchild said:

the thread on volkszone.com seems to have given some pretty epic ideas:



these plastic drums can be had for pennies - and would stand up the media blasting quite well. The comment about adding a dyson cyclone stage to the dust extraction is genius itself

Absolutely love this idea, might have to pinch it for myself!

[Paul Barrett]

This is mine, great with some restofine blast media, I just set it up when I have a batch of stuff to clean up

[mhuk]

I made mine from a cardboard box with a bit of Perspex as a window lol

[1980escort]

Sept 11, 2014 13:55:06 GMT edwell said:

I've been contemplating something like this



anyone had any experience? Seems to alleviate a lot of the issues with air blasting i.e. dust and needing a massive compressor

Ive something similar for my pressure washer i found that the pipe for the sand tends to get wet and therefore cloggs up, when it works its fairly effective but you do get quite wet lol

Sent from my GT-I9505 using proboards

[georgeb]

Sept 16, 2014 12:56:32 GMT 1980escort said:

Sept 11, 2014 13:55:06 GMT edwell said:

I've been contemplating something like this



anyone had any experience? Seems to alleviate a lot of the issues with air blasting i.e. dust and needing a massive compressor

Ive something similar for my pressure washer i found that the pipe for the sand tends to get wet and therefore cloggs up, when it works its fairly effective but you do get quite wet lol

Sent from my GT-I9505 using proboards

The downside I can see of this, is that unless the item being cleaned was fairly substantial, it'd be halfway up the bleedin' street before you knew it!