Been planning on making one of these for over a year now, this thread is great and tally's in nicely with the research Iv'e been doing (I was gonna do this as part of my final year project in uni). The general plan was to create some kind of hybrid sandblast/vapour blast cabinet so I can both strip paint etc and put a finish on parts. With a simple and easy change over mechanism. I have a rough idea sketched out and it looks very doable, so will post back up the progress when i get around to it. I have a few weeks off over the x-mas period so was hoping to get a start on it then.
Realistically it is probably cheaper and easier to have both a sand blaster and a water blaster as the changeover would be time consuming and problematic at best. If you keep your eyes open you can pick up used sand blast cabinets cheap enough at the alternative is to just use paint stripper and just water blast. But if you want to have a go at it then good for you. More than happy to be proven wrong Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Just a question Chris. If the alloy parts are cleaned first with 'alloy cleaner', containing phosphoric acid, do they come up okay when wet blasted?
https://dana-ridge.com.au is where I get mine, google potters AD glass media, you might find someone local who sells it.
I found someone not too far away, about an hour drive (considering im rural-ish) that has them, $65 per 25kg bag. My setup is nothing flash, just a converted sandblasting cabinet, custom tank, septic pump with agitation bypass. Still has the sandblasting gun attached, anyway for the moment just using a 25kg mix of soda + 100L of water. Seems to work quite well, more effective than dry soda and more consistent feed with the media. I still need to add some more soda i think. Anyway its just a tinkering work in progress till i can get a decent blast nozzle in it (was quoted $240 for one to suit my compressor cfm). Glass beads are going to be the long term ideal, but not really wanting to spend a lot at the moment i just wanted to get away from dry soda, to at least wet soda. Still gotta add the foot operated pedal that does the air/pump trigger, but most importantly gotta add a wiper arm and motor as well as some good lighting, that will be the most crucial.
That bead to water ratio should be 20 to 1 , I go through a coffee cup full of bead in an hour of blasting. $65 is about what I pay you can use other media as well
20 parts beads / 1 part water ? Yeah im using soda at the moment, cause i had a spare unused bag laying about and i get 25kg of it cheap, less than 1 dollar a kg.
I was gonna say, be expensive the other way around. Seems to be ok with the mix of soda i got at the moment, thinking a little bit more might help tho. Have only tested it on a piston so far and it did that well. When i get the chance i'll try it out on a cylinder head and barrels and see from there.
Tried the AD glass beads today, so far not so good. Basically got little to no cleaning action from it. Gonna have to see what i can find, tried 4kg per 100l water or so.
Should be around a 1 in 10 mixture to be effective. Depending on your compressor. I bought one of these to try once I get around to setting it up It is what the New Zealand guy uses when he doesn’t make his own. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
Best way to check Your media to water ratio is to buy a 5l plastic bottle , cut a hole in the side spray your slurry mix into the big hole you cut until it overflows then stop the hose , let the contents settle and look at the bottle you should see bead about a 1/6th to 1/5th of the way up the bottle , mine is a tad low in these pics and my water needs to be changed , I have been stripping painted wheels which has affected it I use about a coffee cup of bead every hour of blasting , it is important to keep this ratio
yeah im gonna calculate it all correctly, my biggest issue was the feed. i cleaned a few things and did some things and now seems to have a good feed. its all teething process, but i'll get one of those cheap ebay guns when i can and see the difference, but so far the blasting gun seems to work real well. i turned off my tank agitation as it seemed to push all the media to the opposite side of the tank where as now it sucking it all through. the glass beads seem way lighter than the soda also, so it all helps.
My sump is 200l or there abouts , I use just over half a bag of bead when setting it up for the first time
At the moment i've got 8kg in for 100L I can add more water, the tank is only about half full, but it seems to be enough. Again just more teething issues. Also i gotta seal the cabinet up better, found plenty of leaks lol.
Depending on the pump you are using and the shape of the tank will determine what sort of agitation you need... these little dirty water pumps work best in smaller containers.. I bought a 35 litre container from Bunnings the other day which is wide enough to allow plenty of room for fittings etc and a reasonable amount of water. It is all trial and error... you can also adjust the amount of agitation by having a ball calve or something else adjustable on the agitation line... you only want it to swirl around and keep the beads in suspension.. not force anything into the suction of the pump, they dont work well with high concentrations of solids... uses way too much power for the equivalent flow / pressure performance. Also it is good to add a breather (raised about 500mm above the cabinet) which should help with the misting a bit.