DIY dry ice blasting

Superbowl · Jul 3, 2021

I have got some machines that I want to remove peeling paint from without disassembly. The areas around the motors, gibs, lead screws, etc. are not places for grit blasting.

Has anyone tried using dry ice in a small hopper type or pressure pot type sand blasting unit???

It is just for a few small areas so this job is not worth paying a professional with a real dry blasting machine to come out.

doug8cat · Jul 3, 2021

In my very limited knowledge of this. Dry ice will remove only surface contaminates. So.. the brown scaly iron oxide should disappear, the underlaying pitting will not. If this is your desired out come great. However if you are looking for that post blasted pastel flat look, I am not sure this will be the method of choice.
Again very limited knowledge on my part, if anyone has a better gasp of please elaborate a little so we can learn.

dalmatiangirl61 · Jul 3, 2021

I've looked into dry ice blasting, but never done it. The equipment to do it is not cheap, don't know if regular blasting equipment would work. Can you get dry ice pellets locally? Have you tried a needle scaler?

Spud · Jul 3, 2021

dalmatiangirl61 said:
I've looked into dry ice blasting, but never done it. The equipment to do it is not cheap, don't know if regular blasting equipment would work. Can you get dry ice pellets locally? Have you tried a needle scaler?

I bought 2 dry ice blasters years ago at auction but the hoses and handpiece didn't come with the machines, instead it was sold off in a different lot which I was not aware of. A new hose and handpiece assembly is over $2K from ColdJet, so I haven't used my machines at all.

Superbowl · Jul 3, 2021

dalmatiangirl61 said:
I've looked into dry ice blasting, but never done it. The equipment to do it is not cheap, don't know if regular blasting equipment would work. Can you get dry ice pellets locally? Have you tried a needle scaler?

I haven't tried anything yet. It's only paint. As anyone knows, I could do it with a wire brush, sandpaper, chemicals, or needle scaler. I am just considering what is the easy way to get around the sensitive areas. I can mask off those sensitive areas and grit blast the rest.

My question was has anyone tried dry ice pellets in a regular blasting rig?

ratbldr427 · Jul 3, 2021

We had or may still have one. It worked pretty well for cleaning our printing presses. As you can imagine any kind of grit would cause $xxxx damage.
We had a 40hp screw comp on wheels to power it. The media was pellets about like rice grains which we ordered in a insulated cooler about the size of cot.

It was great for removing caked on grease and ink spills while not leaving any residue.It would abrade some things if held on too long. Obviously it would blow off any loose paint.The parts looked like new when done.Probably the best fastest method for cleaning in place machinery with out damage.

Its down fall was it had a bronze mixer that kept the co2 from clumping up.It kept jamming up and damaging the impeller. Probably operator error.

So renting a pro unit will work I don't think you can just buy the pellets and use them in any kind of blaster without some kind of feeder to disperse the pellets. Actually that is the only real difference between it and a common blaster.

We also bought a soda blaster that we never used before we got the dry ice unit.

boslab · Jul 3, 2021

I have some stained brickwork to clean, it’s leached white calcium and or magnesium oxide, so I needed a blast or chemical to shift it, HCl is sort of working, tried walnut blasting, cheaper than dry ice but gets there ( laser works but 45000 was definitely not an option!) walnut or glass aka media blasting may be your only recourse, I’ve only ever seen videos of ice, was told they were dry ice blasting the solar panels of the solar farm down a lane from me, went to look but they weren’t working, which was a few days ago, might give it another go Monday. It obviously doesn’t damage glass.
Mark

DDoug · Jul 3, 2021

There are plastic abrasives, both thermoset and theroplast.

BTW I have never seen nor heard of anyone using either a syphon or pressure blaster with dry ice.

Note the aforementioned brass mixer to keep clumping down.

dalmatiangirl61 · Jul 3, 2021

I wonder if putting a vibrator on the hopper would keep it in suspension? If you try it let us know how it works. I could use something faster than a needle scaler, my problem is oil based lead paint, over calcamine, on concrete. Just got a small scaffold so I can get to ceiling in area pictured below, and there is still another larger room to go.

sfriedberg · Jul 3, 2021

dalmatiangirl61, a shot blaster would take that paint right off. I'm thinking of the units they use for sripping concrete floors before putting on a resin finish. I had my shop slab poured with chopped fiber reinforcement and the shot blaster abraded all the protruding fiberglass right off. The shot blasters they use for this are shielded, so there is very little scattering of stray shot and what there is cleans up easily.

What I don't know is if any of those units are adapted to work on vertical or overhead surfaces, although it would not surprise me as the floor coating specialists definitely do all-around jobs. I'd recommend asking a specialist to come out and have a look. It might well be cheaper, and certainly much faster, to have somebody with the optimal equipment do the job than to do it in-house with hand scrapers, and it would be less messy than using ordinary media blasting.

dalmatiangirl61 · Jul 3, 2021

sfriedberg said:
a shot blaster would take that paint right off.

Steel shot? Or...? First thing I tried was a regular pot blaster with slag, it failed on several counts, first was that after a minute you could no longer see, and that was with pumping 10,000 cfm of air thru the room. Situation was slightly different in that area as there was also a layer of drywall compound smeared on wall, media just bounced off it, if there was a crack in the gypsum it would eat straight thru and really gouge out the concrete. And concrete is probably not the correct term, I think its actually limecrete, most definitely softer than portland. The area pictured above went fairly quickly, the calcamine would crumble instantly and I could move pretty fast, the black paint on back wall was agonizingly slow. I expect (hope) most of ceiling to go quickly.

sfriedberg · Jul 3, 2021

dalmatiangirl61 said:
Steel shot? Or...?

I think it's steel. Maybe stainless steel. The guys who did my shop floor used a machine that looked a bit like an undersized janitorial floor buffer, with a skirt that came down to the ground on all sides of the disk. They just moved it along the floor at a slow pace, and I think they cleaned up all the chopped fiber stickout and prepped the concrete for MMA resin in one pass.

Not sure exactly how their machine scavenged and recycled the shot. There was minimal debris in the air while they were working.

Strostkovy · Jul 4, 2021

Areas where you can't have grit get in aren't a suitable place for dry blasting either, as the stuff you blast off will get into the important bits and are often plenty abrasive on their own. You will need to disassemble and mask parts if they are sensitive.

52 Ford · Jul 4, 2021

dalmatiangirl61 said:
I wonder if putting a vibrator on the hopper would keep it in suspension? If you try it let us know how it works. I could use something faster than a needle scaler, my problem is oil based lead paint, over calcamine, on concrete. Just got a small scaffold so I can get to ceiling in area pictured below, and there is still another larger room to go.

What about one of those abrasive blaster kits for a pressure washer? I saw a guy on YouTube use one to strip the paint off of the inside of a steel boat. No dust, but you do still get a lot of stuff in the air. It looked like it worked well. I don't know what type of paint he was removing, but to me it looked like it was just as fast as a conventional siphon feed blaster. Come to think of it, I think Keith Rucker used one in a video a year or two ago.

Edit: here's a link to one... Error | DNS Resolution | Northern Tool + Equipment

john.k · Jul 6, 2021

A lot of guys are doing soda blasting,supposed to be aluminium and glass safe.....uses crystal of washing soda......Id think the best might be high pressure water .....they used 30k psi to do the refinery tanks ....this will take down to the bare metal......I do know steel grit is possibly the most destructive material in the universe......one single particle will seize a nut and bolt solid,or destroy the hydraulic steering valves in a crane .....even the fine dust will wreck anything mechanical it gets into.

Winterfalke · Jul 6, 2021

Might you by any chance have one of those laser rust removal guys near by? No grit, bare metal, minor clean up from what they show in the neat videos.

john.k · Jul 6, 2021

Ive never done dry ice blasting,but I suspect it may be sucessful because many coating and plastic materials become very brittle at lo temperatures.......This will include rubber blast hose materials ,and the rubber valves used to control blast air.......I do know from conventional blasting some materials are quite time consuming to blast away,and anything sticky or greasy will build up a protective layer of abrasive ,and must be scraped or burnt off......then there abrasive traps and pockets. The plastic stick on labels on shipping containers are very time consuming,and should be burnt off with flame paint stripping equiptment before blasting.

sfriedberg · Jul 6, 2021

I've got a friend who just acquired a small soda blaster to clean up corrosion on aluminum engine parts. Works very nicely, removes some light rust from steel, but not real effective on strong paint films.

Strostkovy · Jul 7, 2021

john.k said:
Ive never done dry ice blasting,but I suspect it may be sucessful because many coating and plastic materials become very brittle at lo temperatures.......This will include rubber blast hose materials ,and the rubber valves used to control blast air.......I do know from conventional blasting some materials are quite time consuming to blast away,and anything sticky or greasy will build up a protective layer of abrasive ,and must be scraped or burnt off......then there abrasive traps and pockets. The plastic stick on labels on shipping containers are very time consuming,and should be burnt off with flame paint stripping equiptment before blasting.

I accidently ran 500 psi liquid nitrogen through a rubber hose. It certainly got firm.

LccJester · Jul 7, 2021

we have a dry ice blaster here and it works good for cleaning but it doesn't do good for removing rust or paint. If you turn the pressure up enough to start removing paint and rust it clogs up due to freezing up

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