New stuff in my garage

[iowarotax]

Well after many years I finally got a air compressor and bead/sand blaster in my garage. Any tips on using the bead blaster? I have 80 grit beads right now. It seems to work good, but makes a mess! The cabinet leeks the fine dust out. Is this safe to use on most engine parts like the outside of cylinders and cases?

[hublake]

I have that same Clarke cabinet but I don't use a pressurized pot. I have my compressor hooked directly to the cabinet and have the bead in the bottom . I hooked up my shop vacumn to suck the dust out of the cabinet. Very little of the blasting compound gets out through the small cracks. When I have my vacumn running I can't open the top as it creates a vacumn so I leave a small pencil in the door. Make sense? I will post a couple of pictures in a little bit.

[edog]

You need to hook a vac up to it.

You will need to drill a whole on one side for a vent cap.


Have you tryed crushed coal?

[dreadhed]

Don't run your PSI over 80. Yes it's fine to use on engine parts, just make sure you get everything cleaned out. I use coal slag like Edog is talking about it's cheap too, but glass is good for aluminum parts.

[iowarotax]

Where in the world do you get coal slag? I can hook it up to run the media out of the bottom of the cabinet, but I have had the pressurized blaster for awhile and ran the gun into the cabinet. I may try the original gun that came with the unit.

[hublake]

I don't know about coal slag but my TSC store had some recylcled stuff that I have used that is only about $6.00 a bag. I use the orginal gun and here is a couple of pics on my set up. I acutally like the glass bead best as I think you get a bit smoother surface.

[iowarotax]

Before I bought anything I was told to get a pressurized unit. I was told they work better than the siphon units. I will try both and see. I kinda have everything rigged right now. I will try and seal it up a little better.

[Dirtcrasher]

The pressure pot is great for outside work and wasting tons of sand, you'll dump that whole pot in about 1.5 minutes. If you do it on a tarp you can reuse some of it but those things are prone to clogs and really slow things down when they get stuffed up.

Yes, you do need the shop vac attached and you'll find that the window gets ruined real fast unless you change the clear plastic film over the window.

I blasted my cases with 00 sand, just like the play sand at Homie D. I powdercoated them satin black and you couldn't see any imperfections.

I tried the black beauty, I tried the glass bead and both of them took tons more effort than the sand.

I stripped my cases down to nothing, blasted them and then pressure washed them again and again till all sand was gonezo.

What worked really well for me, was to buy a gallon of stripper to remove 75% of the paint and pressure wash that off, then dry them and off to the blaster.

The least crap you introduce into your blaster the better! Very nice compressor you have there!!

[Dammit!]

How do you protect gasket surfaces when you blast cases?

[Yamatrike400]

What gallon compressor is that? I have an 80 gallon with a 3 Cylinder compressor and 5? horse motor i believe.Its a beast!

[iowarotax]

Its a 60 gallon, 6.5 hp.

[trikes4life]

tape gasket surfaces

[brapp]

ir when you do engine parts use a walnut shell based abrasive and it doesnt hurt the gasket surface too much or i have also used borax for verry fine blasting like removing rust off chrome and not damiging the other chrome.