47-59 Media Blasting for Hobbyist

[dsraven]

in my cabinet blaster I use garnet, it doesn't just powder up right away like sand does and it is heavy so it settles down quickly. since the cabinet recycles the sand powder makes it hard to see what you're doing. I installed a couple of led lights in there plus lowered the tray and modified the pick up tube. works pretty well and connected an old vacuflow to the cabinet. the cannister is a distance away but it still gets full pretty quick with powder.
for outside stuff I have a 5 gallon pressure pot blaster. it works pretty well but I will sometimes go over spots first with a clean and strip disc, you know the ones that look like a ball of spagetti? those work pretty well and save the compressor run time as well as the power bill. the area around the outside blasting is about 10 feet fallout range. for the compressor I have built my own air cooler and water collector. basically a long length of copper line that is graded downhill away from the compressor, then that drops into a vertical length of pipe with a drain on the bottom and outlet near the top. the compressor has an auto drain connected as well as the copper line and the wall pipe. the drain is connected to the lights so when the lights are on the compressor is usually on. it is a timed deal so it purges the system every few minutes or whatever you set the timer to. works pretty well. compressor is an 80 gal 5 hp 2 stage.