Sand Blasting Systtems........lets see YOURS.

[dkmc]

I'd like to see/hear about your Sand Blasting systems.
Cabinet, Pressure Pot, full rooms, etc.
Compressors, Air SYSTEMS, etc.

I have a Trinco siphon cabinet with Aluminum Oxide media or Glass Beads, mostly keep the Alox in it.
Also have a bigger carcass cabinet outside I need to get working on.
Waaay back about 1982-3 I went to "sand blast skool" and found out just how much air (CFM) it really takes to accomplish anything, AND that siphon is a joke compared to Pressure Pot "technology".


Once I figured out the magic formula, I set about building a Pressure Pot blaster using an old "forklift" LP tank, and what I call a "Bar Stock" blast valve. Basically a blast valve made from 1018 steel barstock. and nozzle made from a 1/2" pipe plug. (Use steel not cast iron) No, the hole didn't last too long, and quickly eroded from 1/8" to over 1/4" during a few hours of operation. But it's a cheap part.

Air....can't get enough!

Whew.....Skool of Hard Knocks!
Started with (believe it or not...it's pretty funny now) a Crapsman 1/2HP oil-less and tank-less "compressor". Man what a POS! And a small siphon gun that looked like a paint spray gun.....back in the late '70's.
Somehow I began to sense this "air requirement" thing,
And if 1/2HP is BAD, then 3 or 4 HP should REALLY make things happen!

NOT

Well, I then went on to 2 WABCO air brake compressors (big rig equipment), driven with a lawn tractor. SURELY this would be the ultimate ammount of air! And that was probably about 16-18CFM....JOKE!

Finally, I figured out just what CFM was, and what was needed to REALLY make things happen. I think I found an Orifice chart in the back of a Grainger catalog.
Back when the Grainger catalog had all that cool engineering information in the back few pages.

Well, I found an old IR 105 3 cylinder portable for sale simply by driving along the lake one day. Probably because I was NOW looking for such, and sorta KNEW what I was needing to spot. Wish I had pics, but don't. Probably from the late '40's, it had a 3 cylinder 2 stage compressor, driven by a Waukesha 4 cylinder engine, monster....5-1/4 Bore x 4-5/8 Stroke....400 cubic inches!
750 RPM max, it really seemed economical on gas.

Had a knock from the day I got it running, found out years later (after a buddy bought it about 4th hand from me) that a wrist pin bushing was totally missing.

This thing made AIR!
100 CFM at 100 PSI.....I am
IN BUSINESS now, and I filled the back yard with sand, and (I'm sure) drove some of the (close) neighbors to the breaking point. This is at my parents house in the city, where a typical lot is 50 x 100. Ours was 50 x 180. I just CAN NOT imagine having ME as a neighbor back in the day. How did they not call the cops?

My extra measure of neighborly awareness was to fit a Hush Thrush non-straight-thru muffler to the rig, to assure whisper-quiet operation of the compressor (as opposed to the straight pipe it had).
Never taking into consideration the sound of the air exiting the blast nozzle! Oh my gosh.

I did a lathe complete. Blast, fill, repaint. THE reason I studied Sand Blasting in the first place, to blast an old flat belt lathe back into a sort of presentable state. In July....at 95F ambient. Because I wanted to see if I could. And I was determined to.
And then I did car frames, wheels, lawn furniture, etc.
Till I had enough.....about 6 months later.


Glory daze...

 

[Steve in SoCal]

I have a couple of Zero cabinets and three big cabinets that need new consumables. My building has a blast room 25X30 it needs a lot of work! The building was a heavy fab shop, I have a 60HP Gardener Denver rotary and 600 gallon vertical tank. I would like to get the room functional but, it is way down the list. My little cabinets work OK with my 5HP Curtis, I also have a 25HP Sulair in reserve. I will try and get some pics in the next few days.

Steve

 

[moonlight machine]

I have a little Skat Blast cabinet, 60" x 36" x 28" high. Siphon type. My compressor is a Saylor Beall 5 hp, I can blast for as long as I need and never have the air pressure drop to less than 120 psi. I have it hooked to a Torit dust collector, the air inside stays clear, easy to see what I am doing. For sure not state of the art but it serves my needs just fine. I have used Zero cabinets in the past, Nice stuff, The dust / media separator worked better than other cabinets I have used.

 

[Dan from Oakland]

30" X 48" Zero Cabinet with Dust Extractor and 15 HP Ingersol Type 30 Recip. Its all we need for what we do. Its loaded with Glass Beads- Ballotini AC Media if I recall correctly.

 

[sable]

I don't have a blaster but where I did my apprenticeship there was a huge Tilghmans blast room ,probably 20 foot wide and high and 50 foot long ,there was a smaller unit as well with a rotary table.

To me the unusual thing about this setup was that the media was steel shot ,they used to say it was ground up ball bearings ,whatever, this thing would clean rust off metal at a colossal rate compared too anything else I have seen ,the shot was recycled through a complex looking contraption with conveyers and cyclones and the whole outfit ran off the shop air system that was a shed full of big reciprocating compressors.

 

[Ray Behner]

I've got your typical 4 foot wide cabinet with a fan type cyclone separator exhaust. Works great, except for the breakdown of the Black Beauty media. Get's pretty dusty in there and clouds the window too soon. I now use steel grit which doesn't break down, allowing a clearer view of the work piece. It's not as aggressive as the BB, but does damn good.
A friend just gave me 25# of plastic grit. He never used it and knows no one that has. I'm sure it's for delicate stuff. Is it worth using?

 

[Econdron]

I saw a real impressive blast system at a foundry once. They loaded in 20 to 50 pound castings and this thing bounced the castings around like a rag doll. Obviously way to heavy duty for anything I would ever need, it would probably tear apart most of what I would put in there, but for the chunks for metal they put in, it sure took the flashings off very efficiently!

 

[greenbuggy]

No pics but I've got a blast cabinet I made out of a 500 gal fuel oil tank, fitted with a Zero blast dust collector/reclaimer and Clemco/Zero siphon blast gun I upgraded with a boron carbide nozzle because I run some pretty aggressive Alox media. Right now being fed by a shitty 2 HP craftsman compressor that feeds a big reserve tank, definitely not enough for continuous usage but fortunately I mostly use it for little jobs.

For big stuff I've got an old IR 150 CFM compressor & a Clemco 6 CF blast pot, that I mostly use coal slag in.

 

[kpotter]

Having a sand blast system is like having a hot wife, everyone wants to use her. I had a really nice sand blast system I gave it to a friend of mine who is really sick of everyone comeing to his shop to use it. There are some things you just dont want to own. A plan a boat a trailer and a smokin hot wife can be added to the list. I heard once that if it flies F.... or floats you are better off renting it.

 

[Mr.Bronze]

I've got a Pangborn gritblast built in about 1950 that we use to clean our castings.

It uses steel shot (looks like its about 20 grit, for sandpaper reference) that is second hand from some other outfit, I guess the virgin stuff just obliterates anything that is put inside it (including the AR plating that lines that chamber).
The plating already looks like sandstone on a riverbed as it is, pretty neat looking.

Grit is shot using a centrifugal wheel, something like 0.5-3 LB/second of shot? Work is loaded onto a rotary 8' diameter table inside it. Nasty machine, and is a total pain in the ass rube-goldberg machine to maintain. At least Pangborn is still around.

 

[Blazemaster]

I have a Pauli & Griffin Cabinet, 36"x48". It's a nice little cabinet for what I do and is made to move some air for its size. It has 1/2" ID air lines and nozzle. I have it connected to a cheap devilbiss 5hp 60 gallon compressor and the cabinet will go through the air in the tank in about 15 seconds lol. The compressor cannot keep up worth a damn. I have tried glass beads, a mix of glass beads and alox, and just alox. I prefer just the alox for what I do.

I bought a used quincy 390, a 10hp 3ph motor and two 250 gallon tanks. I poured a small slab to build a compressor shed and am in the process of rebuilding everything to get it hooked up. Hopefully it'll be enough air...

 

[moonlight machine]

Having a sand blast system is like having a hot wife, everyone wants to use her. I had a really nice sand blast system I gave it to a friend of mine who is really sick of everyone comeing to his shop to use it. There are some things you just dont want to own. A plan a boat a trailer and a smokin hot wife can be added to the list. I heard once that if it flies F.... or floats you are better off renting it.

Just say NO. No smoking hot wives allowed, maintenance is way to high. If you are going to use my saying get it right, If it flies, floats or f ks rent it!

 

[dkmc]

Great info, lots of good systems out there.

I need to probably join ACA (Air Compressors Anonymous)
Ever since the lack of air way back when I've been an air compressor addict. I have way too many in all sizes and states of repair....some even work! In my mind right now I count about 12. From 2HP electric to an old IR 160 gas engine drive basket case. The 160 worked but the prev. owner gutted it out of the trailer, so I've built a skid for it, and need to get it all re-mounted and plumbed.

There's IR, Quincy, Joy, Worthington, Hydrovane. Piston, Vane, and Screw.
I also probably need to join BSA (Band Saws Anonymous)
And Lathe, Mill, and forklift anonymous while I'm at it.

I bought a used quincy 390, a 10hp 3ph motor and two 250 gallon tanks. I poured a small slab to build a compressor shed and am in the process of rebuilding everything to get it hooked up. Hopefully it'll be enough air...

Post pics here of your equipment (your AIR COMPRESSOR equipment!) and progress!

 

[Blazemaster]

Heres the slab I poured, nothing fancy (plan to start the shed next week)



Here is one of the 250 gallon tanks, other one is getting blasted



Heres the cabinet I have





Heres the phase converter I upgraded to 15hp from 10hp to run the compressor motor, and the 10hp motors next to it.



Heres the big quincy 390, this was before I started tearing it down. Iwill have to grab some newer pics of the progress

 

[dkmc]

Nice!
The 390 is a massive piece of iron!
Yours appears to have what they call the 'old style' oil pump, just
like the one I had. Although, it's blue which is newer. Mine was
green.

I drug home a 390 from the scrap yard 20 years ago.
It had a scored high pressure cylinder and crank.
Unfortunately I found a guy that was supposed to do crank shaft repairs, and said he could weld up the crank,talked a good line,made it sound like he had the equipment to do the job. I had way less 'street smarts' back then, and I let him take the crank., He brought it back welded up with 7018, and all warped to shit. Hell, I could have done THAT. I ended up scrapping the whole unit. I have a 350 that also needs a sleeve in the HP cylinder. Now that I have a boring mill, I believe I can sleeve that cylinder casting.

 

[rcoope]

In the "powder coat vs anodize for salt water" thread I've been going on about our in-house powder coating setup for smallish parts. For this we have a mod-u-blast cabinet Economy Series Blast Cabinets I think it's the larger of the series, like 24" x 40" Apparently it's even made in Canada but regardless it's great for the small parts we do. We have a 5hp compressor supplying 80psi and while you'd like to have more, it's generally fine.

 

[Mud]

I have a Zero cabinet. Had an IR T30 10 HP that developed a knock, so I replaced it with an Atlas Copco 15 HP. I finally have Enough Air! It will run the Zero at a steady 160 psi which makes it about 10 times faster than 120 psi. I'm going to rebuild the T30 for a backup, thinking of trying them in parallel with a larger nozzle in the gun just for kicks - the present deal is hard enough to hang onto.

 

[dkmc]

It will run the Zero at a steady 160 psi which makes it about 10 times faster than 120 psi.

Wow 160PSI!
I think I read someplace that generally anything over 80PSI will pulverize many abrasives. They probably meant sand and glass beads tho....

 

[Mud]

I guess it would, but 70 MPH uses more gas than 25 MPH too, right? I use mostly glass beads, if I can use more but get the job done faster I'm happy. I threw a crusty old finned brake drum in the cabinet to test it, turned up the regulator and let fly. The rust filled the cabinet so bad I couldn't see what was happening, so I just waved the gun where I thought the drum was for a little while. I stopped and let the air clear, and all the scale was gone, it just needed a little of the brown stain removed to be perfect. The groove for the backing plate was filled with scale and crud, one quick pass blew it all out. Took about 90 seconds, the same thing at 100 PSI would have been about 10 minutes.

We still normally turn the pressure down to 100 or less, because we don't want or need that aggressive cleaning action on most items. I can't say yet how much the higher pressure would affect media consumption long term.

Zero says with more CFM I can run a larger nozzle to move more media at the same pressure to get more work done faster, maybe that's a better approach? I'm using the second to smallest nozzle now IIRC.

 

[Silent_Man]

I have a Zero cabinet. Had an IR T30 10 HP that developed a knock, so I replaced it with an Atlas Copco 15 HP. I finally have Enough Air! It will run the Zero at a steady 160 psi which makes it about 10 times faster than 120 psi. I'm going to rebuild the T30 for a backup, thinking of trying them in parallel with a larger nozzle in the gun just for kicks - the present deal is hard enough to hang onto.

We are looking into upgrading our Trinco cabinets and the 3 companies we are talking to all think 60 psi (using pressure pots, not siphon fed) is enough to do a good heavy blast with 24 grit alminum oxide to our iron castings.