Blast cabinet

[fusername]

room to manure you say? I think I will try and keep mine a little cleaner in there, moisture can really wreck havoc on these things, but if it works for you...
thanks for snapping htat pic, I am pretty sure I am deffinatly taking one of these home. now what I was going to say about the vent is on the old machine at work, the vent was flat with the top, teh whole roof was a double chamber. it allowed fresh air into the interior near the front at the glass, adn had a mesh in the back of the top to let air in. This caused fresh clean air to blow by the glas, probably protecting it a bit from flying media, and keeping your vision that much clearer. I may attemt this mod if I have the time, otherwise I'll just use it as is.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

"…manure…" is a crappy maneuver which you will find yourself doing when trying to maneuver heavy things around in the cabinet to get different angles at what you are cleaning using those bulky and limiting sleeved gloves. Actually in this case it was a malapropism (http://jokesnjokes.net/funny.jokes.amus ... opisms.htm).

I don't know if changing the air input location is going to help much and potentially could cause more of a mess on the outside. Your vacuum is what creates the cross-flow drawing the dust out but, hopefully, not the heavier media; the shape of the cabinet and the location of things could be altered by making inlet location changes. I think that may be one of the reasons for the cover with the low inlet locations that you can see in the pictures.

You do bring up a good question and that is did they do a smoke test when they designed the cabinet to see how different locations and their effects of air flow/swirl patterns when they designed this. (for what it’s worth) Literally hundreds of hours (I think I was told it was in the thousands) of airflow tests were done on vacuum toilets just to get the shape of the bowl to work correctly; a clean sweep you could say.

Lee

[fusername]

haha true, but this is HF, they looked at pictures of a blast cabinet that worked and made thiers based on it, and will only revist the design if idiots like us stop buying thier poop. Althogh I can see the air draw location needing ot change if I did that. I wonder how hard it would be to recreate the hopper design used by the real machine at work...

[Chris V]

http://seattle.craigslist.org/est/tls/3396186385.html

[Ol'fogasaurus]

http://www.harborfreight.com/industrial ... 94274.html

They do have a double door but now you are getting into the serious stuff $$$ wise. If you look at some of the blast cabinets that the shows on Spike or Speed TV’s “Gearz” (I can’t remember if the VOL’s [velocity TV] programs also have the big cabinets) they have a deep side added (an option from what I think they said) that allows them to live in there if they wanted. I have used a front loading (the window pivots up) and while handier for most things has some of the same flaws as found in the HF and like units.

I would suspect that the basic thing could be an on-shore design or spec that is now built off-shore. I have seen the same basic design with several badges on it or, in a couple of cases, a different color (blue I think or maybe gray too).

Lee

[fusername]

it's this guy that's got me drooling
http://southcoast.craigslist.org/tls/3367696909.html

[Ol'fogasaurus]

That is pretty nice. A front/top load with a good vacuum stytem tied to it. I was looking at another brand, similar to it but its price kept jumping until it was out of my budget. I don't even see them listed if I do a search under blast cabinet.

Lee

[SCOTTRODS]

We have a Dust collector like that one, on one of our cabinets at work,.... It Sucks for any decent cabinet..... But it's better than nothing. I have better results using a RIGID branded Shop Vac for mine..... Good dust collector units cost more than the Blast Rig usually. we Have Large hanging bag versions on our two big cabinets.... easy to clean and they draw so well, they suck the gloves off your hands if you don't pay attention....

[fusername]

haha I deffinatly didn't have that issue at work w/ our vac cabinet. sucker took up a lot of space and looked expensive. I think I will stick w/ the shop vac rig. Can I use a washable filter on the shopvac to save $$ on replacements? I know just how much I will be using this thing. Maybe I will vent the shop vac into the basement (unfinished/unused dirt) to keep dust down, and since I think those washable ones don't filter quite as well. I currently have a nice HEPA something or other filter on there since I suspected the place had both asbestos and plague residue when I started cleaning. not gonna waste that on a cabinet.

scottrods, you saying I'm better off saving 400 bucks nad just using a shop vac right? cause I think that is what I'll do. I'd really rather save that money and spend it on a parts tank.

[SCOTTRODS]

haha I deffinatly didn't have that issue at work w/ our vac cabinet. sucker took up a lot of space and looked expensive. I think I will stick w/ the shop vac rig. Can I use a washable filter on the shopvac to save $$ on replacements? I know just how much I will be using this thing. Maybe I will vent the shop vac into the basement (unfinished/unused dirt) to keep dust down, and since I think those washable ones don't filter quite as well. I currently have a nice HEPA something or other filter on there since I suspected the place had both asbestos and plague residue when I started cleaning. not gonna waste that on a cabinet.

scottrods, you saying I'm better off saving 400 bucks nad just using a shop vac right? cause I think that is what I'll do. I'd really rather save that money and spend it on a parts tank.

I use a shop vac, with a " separator" in between it and the cabinet. I also use a hepa filter in the shop vac and keep the air kleen. Still a mess to clean out the vac, but the air in my cabinet is quite clean.

[Chris V]

I finally replaced the media pick-up hose...Used the old hose from my aquarium cleaning equipment - which I upgraded to some 5/8" heater hose. Took the time to replace the plastic sheets for the viewing window & the lights and also moved the air to the back of the unit.

[fusername]

does the shop vac suck out the media and need to be regularly returned to the cabinet, or does it do a decent job of just collecting the dust?

[Ol'fogasaurus]

does the shop vac suck out the media and need to be regularly returned to the cabinet, or does it do a decent job of just collecting the dust?

I have a pretty health vacuum tied to my cabinet; in cleaning out the filter and the contaminates, unless I am pointing the gun at the vacuum source hole in the side of the cabinet I am showing minimal (if any) glass beads in the bottom of the vacuum. The filter itself is usually clogged with dust, talcum powder like and about the same amount as if I was vacuuming up sanding dust; e.g., when taping sheet rock and cleaning up the dust there; but that seems to be about it.

Yesterday I forgot to turn on the vacuum for about a minute (not very long so a minute is about right) and the cabinet immediately fogged up until I turning the vacuum on and it cleared fairly fast; not immediately but fairly fast. I had to wash the inside of the viewing window after and pulled a lot of dust off it.

I think that unless you are using soda (I am not sure if that is possible, never tried it but I have seen soda used to strip the paint off a car before, the cloud it put out was pretty impressive even with the garage opening had been closed off with plastic sheet to minimize the amount of dusting escaping) the media is heavy enough that that if falls back into the hopper quite quickly. Add to that the speed at which the media comes out of the gun the media is probably are not affected that much by the vacuum that is being used; it is the hanging dust that gets moved.

Lee

[SCOTTRODS]

My System pretty much removes Dust Only..... I limit the flow through the blast cabinet a little, and the separator actually is a 5 gallon bucket, with an inlet that is deep and an outlet that sucks air from the side angle, causing a spinning effect on the air inside the bucket, thus separating the fines and dropping the heavy stuff in the bucket. I don't re-use it anyway, but I guess I could. I try and change my media fairly often, but commonly over-use it anyway, until it's pretty ineffective. Not being lazy, just forgetful.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Fuser, today I was working on my engine run stand and I wanted to remove some machinist's bluing off some parts. I tried to use a scotch-brite pad on a 90° angle grinder but the bluing was fighting me. On an impulse I put the parts in the blast cabinet and within 30 second per part both sides, ends and edges were clean of bluing. I have never seen anything come off so fast and so easily!



I wish now that I had got my cabinet much earlier.

Lee