DIY blasting

2_DONE_THE_TON

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Hey guys!

So I´ve been thinking about getting a blasting cabinet for a looooooong time and now I want to see if its really worth the effort.
I would like to be able to blast at least rims, wheels and tanks in my cabinet.
I have a compressor in my workshop, will it be up for the task?which specs should it have?
What about the blasting gun?any advice?

I think I would like to be able to sodablast too and glassbeads for the rest of the parts...

thanks in advance!
 
Ha!

Quite honestly, you know the beast of a blasting cabinet I own, right? Well... it's about as small as I'd go. Then you know the big v-twin air-compressor I have? Well, get a bigger one, if you're serious. If you want to use two different types of media you need two blasting cabinets... See where this is going?

Hope I am not shattering any dreams...
Greg
 
Well, if you want to do rims, you will indeed need a large cabinet! You will need a very strong air compressor as well, and this will be the case regardless of the size of cabinet. Additionally, you would want a vacuum system and optional reclaimer. The vacuum keeps negative pressure in the cabinet and keeps the dust down so you can see what you are doing. The reclaimer separates broken media and debris and sends only (hopefully) media back to the cabinet.

If you want to get one going on the cheap, you can do a couple of things. If you have a compressor, you can get some functionality by adding a very large tank to it. That way you increase the temporary air volume at the pressure you will need. You can only blast for as long as the air holds out, but for hobby use you can just blast a while and wait for the air to recharge to blast some more.

You can buy a really cheap cabinet and hot rod it a little. I have an old cabinet someone gave me which was crap, but I added a good light to it, and made a connection for my shop vacuum into the top. It is of course total loss and eats more media than it should, but the dust level is manageable. Also put in new glass, gloves and seals. I also added a "T" and a valve to the compressed air line to "stir" the media where the pick up tube draws in the media. This keeps the media flowing much better and adds a little air along with it the performance is much more consistent. I have a really big old compressor so air supply is no problem - sorry I have no idea what output it has, but it's over 9' tall and has a 150 gallon tank. It runs continuously if I blast a lot but it can "keep up" at a functional pressure.

My crappy cabinet does have an advantage with no official separator and vacuum in that I can change media fairly easily. It is a pain, but doable. With a genuine pro unit like I had at my body shop, swapping media was impractical.
 
Most compressors produce plenty of pressure for blasting. It's volume that's the difference. Most garage type cabinets need compressors that produce at least 18 cfm to maintain pressure of 80 - 90 psi. Glass beads only use 40 psi, but require up to 25 cfm since they require a much larger nozzle size. Nozzle size is a major factor when talking pressures. Small media, small nozzles, higher pressure, lower volume. Larger media, larger nozzle, lower pressure, higher volume.

At home, i use the little HF box 18" deep and 18" tall in the back with a shop vac connection and a light added on. It's fine for small parts, but you're not going to blast wheels in it. Even though you could technically stuff a tank in there, you're not going to have work space to actually blast it. I'd say it's good for parts with a dim no larger than 12". If you're cool with wasting a bunch of media, the HF tank does okay for blasting large work. I've blasted cars and frames with one using 60 mesh silica sand.
 
I posted this in another thread today.


I just bought a used HF blast cabinet off of Craigslist for $100. I saw several for sale for between $75 and $100 over the 2 weeks I looked before buying. I used it with some HF glass media using my old 5 hp 120v compressor and it worked really well. I did a lot of small parts and one 18" mag wheel. I took a few breaks when doing the wheel as it got dusty and hard to see, but that was because the breaker kept tripping when running the compressors and a shop vac at the same time.

I can tell that this is something that I am going to kick myself for not buying years ago.


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Blasters work so damn cheap and good in gothenburg theres really no point for me doing what i hate the most!
 
So guys...change of plans!

I think I´m going to stick to outsourcing the blasting,just checked and it will be too damn expensive to have a good blasting possible...

But I´m thinking about doing something different:
I would like to invest in good painting gear..

I already have a really good full face protection mask and suit...I also have all tools and stuff to buff and polish.
till now everything I painted was rattle can, can someone point me in the right direction what I will need painting gun and compressor wise?

I dont plan on painting car parts but mainly frames, tanks and little bits and pieces!

Thanks in advance!
 
I use the same compressor above and a $35 touch up gun and have done a lot of motorcycles. Look at the CB360 thread in my sig for some of the race bikes, street bikes and sport bikes I have done.

I did just drop $90 on a new HVLP gun from Eastwood when I did my Moto Guzzi and used it this last weekend to paint my wife's XS400.
 
Rusnak_322 said:
I use the same compressor above and a $35 touch up gun and have done a lot of motorcycles. Look at the CB360 thread in my sig for some of the race bikes, street bikes and sport bikes I have done.

I did just drop $90 on a new HVLP gun from Eastwood when I did my Moto Guzzi and used it this last weekend to paint my wife's XS400.

Is there a good brand I can get my hands on in Europe that will do the job?
I guess the key are the jets fitted to the guns?
Cleaning is key I guess too.

Thanks!
 
I have a bunch of spray guns, but generally find myself using only two of them. Based on that, my suggestion is to go and get yourself a mid priced gravity feed gun. $200 should do it here but I have not shopped it in a long time. HVLP (high volume low pressure) guns are great but not essential for motorcycle work. Get something from a manufacturer that specifically builds professional spray equipment. I have used a lot of gear, and have found pretty much everything from major manufacturers works well. "Jetting" is pretty simple and depends on the material you are using. Make sure the place you buy your gun from also sells needles and nozzles for it. Generally the paint manufacturer will have recommendations for how to set up your gun, but it somewhat depends on your own technique and what you prefer. Most of the time I grab my gravity gun which is set up for clear (Walmek GEO hvlp made in Italy). I use it for most everything else though for three reasons: It is more maneuverable and less sensitive to gun orientation which is important for painting small or awkward things like motorcycle parts. It wastes less paint - siphon guns can not use all the paint in the cup. It is easier to clean than a siphon gun. The other gun I mostly use is a siphon gun (Either a Binks (old model 7) or DeVilbiss). they are set up for heavier material like heavy primer/surfacers. I usually only use them when I need to apply a lot of material to a lot of surface area, or need an especially uniform heavy coat. On small things I still use the gravity gun even though it is not the greatest the way it is set up for heavy fluids. The point is, it still works ok if you adjust your technique to compensate for being too lazy to change the set up. Devilbiss, Iwata, Sata, and Binks (and many others) all make very good guns. I would NOT buy a bargain spray gun. Modern quality materials are far too expensive to chance problems with poor quality tools.

Of course cleaning is key and can not be overstated. Very much like your carburetors (actually, they are damn near the same thing) the key to being able to clean your spray gun is understanding how it actually works. Once you understand where all the air goes and where all the paint goes it is easy to know how to focus your cleaning efforts. When I am doing anything more than a trivial job I generally have 3 separate cups of solvent for cleaning the gun in increasing levels of contamination so I can keep re-using the solvent for cleaning. Eventually the first cup used for the first rinse has to be discarded and the second takes its place, etc. I take the gun partially apart to clean it EVERY time I use it and completely apart after every job. My gravity gun has hundreds of hours on it, and except for some staining of the nylon components, looks completely unused. Sprays like it as well, so meticulous cleaning is indeed rewarded. I know many pro painters that have guns they use exclusively for clear, but it is not necessary if you really clean your equipment. While I'm thinking about it - remember that clear is absolutely the hardest thing to clean out of your gun! You can't see the clear, so get really good at cleaning dark colors out of it and then repeat this process for the clear!

And don't forget to include a good filter/dryer. Clean DRY air is absolutely essential. In my old shop I built the main supply piping out of 2" cast iron pipe pitched back toward the compressor and a drain petcock. We have very high humidity here and moisture in the compressed air supply is a real problem. Most big shops use a refrigerated chiller to condense the moisture from the air before going to the spray booth. The long (100 + feet) large diameter cool iron pipe condensed all the moisture due to slow air speed and we never got any water to the booth - but we still had a high quality filter/dryer in front of the gun!
 
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