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Need some help buying a sand blaster

younghandyman

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A buddy of mine and I want to start sandblasting/mediablastibg metals and spray painting. He has access to a full paint booth and air system and space to actually media/sand blast parts.

Lookkng into sand blasters that are just a tank and gun that is gravity fed but works well. We found one at princess auto that is cheap but has terrible reviews.

Does anyone have experience using a specific sand blaster that they can recommend?


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Jagmandave

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And do you want to recover and re-use the media or just blow it onto the ground? What media do you plan to use?

Cheap with terrible reviews doesn't sound like much of a recommendation. However, I have one I bought from Sears (I think I paid $20 for it) decades ago that is nothing more than a gravity fed tank on wheels and I did an entire car with it inside and out - but I had access to unlimited clean, dry air and I was outside in an empty dirt parking lot.

I think even the pressure pots from Harbor Freight would be a step up from that tho....
 
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younghandyman

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I'm in the Toronto area so I don't have access to Harbor Frieght unfortunately. Our version of it, Princess Auto, does not have anything for $200-$250.

Going to be doing bike frames, patio furniture, car and boat parts, so was thinking to use crushed glass or when something softer is needed, plastic beads. Maybe csr wheels later on as well.


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younghandyman

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And do you want to recover and re-use the media or just blow it onto the ground? What media do you plan to use?

Cheap with terrible reviews doesn't sound like much of a recommendation. However, I have one I bought from Sears (I think I paid $20 for it) decades ago that is nothing more than a gravity fed tank on wheels and I did an entire car with it inside and out - but I had access to unlimited clean, dry air and I was outside in an empty dirt parking lot.

I think even the pressure pots from Harbor Freight would be a step up from that tho....



We have access to a truck paint shop's air supply and space. We will build a little area so that we can collect the media that we're blasting.


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metlmunchr

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Blasting metal...... Size? Small car parts? Lawn furniture? Car frames? Structural steel?

As a hobby or as a means of income?

As a hobby, it probably doesn't matter other than for the fact that pressure pots work better than gravity feed pots. Past that, not really much difference from one cheap blaster to the next as they're all likely manufactured in one of a few Chinese factories.

As a means of income, forget all the harbor freight and princess auto stuff. It's all painfully slow and far too maintenance intensive to even consider for any sort of volume blasting. It'd be the equivalent of washing box van trucks with a toothbrush. Doesn't matter how hard you work. To have prices competitive with others in the trade, you can't generate enough money per hour to even make minimum wage.
 

SGKent

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catching the media and dust can be critical if you are doing anything that has heavy metals in the waste. Here one can get away with it a couple times but doing it on a regular basis is bound to trigger an inspection sooner or later. The key to any media blasting is the availability of a good air supply, and having a good feed system. You can take a cheap used system and add a good feed to it, and have a killer system. Or you can take a new system with a cheap gun and feed, and forever fight problems. Were it me I would look for a media blasting company there and see what fittings, and guns they have to enhance what you find. Also they may have good used equipment - or someone wanting to sell an older system to upgrade to a nice bigger system. Last - blasting is an art form when on sheet metal - when one hits sheet metal it can tin can and buckle from the tension / heat being created. Play around with some pieces of sheet metal and you will see what I mean.
 

billspit

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A siphon blaster won't cut it for a commercial shop. Using sand as a blast media is difficult now due to new regulations. You will need a large compressor. Look on facebook market place and you will see a bunch of dustless blasters offering their service.
 

sberry

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I scuff after blast with maroon Scotchbrite, just a couple swipes, blow off and paint. But there is more than blast and paint, sanding goes along with this.
Blast is hard work, blast fast is good. To start with need to know how many available hp there are. Second, nice to have a couple media choices, hard and sharp for paint and coatings and soft fine for rust. Sometimes a mix.
 

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myredracer

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You want one of these pot blasters. Available at Princess Auto but it's rather pricey at $350. I have one that is pretty much identical that I got a HF for about 1/2 that. 'Course, the border closure precludes getting stuff from the US. I'd perhaps try CL and you might get lucky.

An excellent media for this pot blaster is coal slag media. I don't know what's available in Canada that's equivalent. I've bought about 10 bags from Tractor Supply in the US that they call Black Diamond. It's fairly inexpensive at about $10 a 50 lb bag. It's excellent stuff for car bodies, suspension parts and other larger steel items. It comes in coarse, medium and fine grit. I've done two car bodies and parts with fine grit. The medium is too coarse IMO. To use it, you need to modify the pot blaster. HF sells a kit that works and is what I did.

For smaller and more delicate parts like aluminum stuff, a media blast cabinet is what you want. I used to have one of the bench models but it was just too small. I bought a used floor model off CL for cheap. With one of these, you want a dust extractor setup using a vacuum and cyclone dust extractor like below. If you don't use the extractor, the fine particles will clog up the vacuum pdq and even destroy it. I use a Home Depot vac that sits on a 5 gallon pail. Glass beads work great and are readily available all over. I recently tried crushed walnut shells on a set of alloy wheels and it was useless.

If you're going to do much "sand" blasting with one of these pot blasters, you'll want to recover the media and screen it to reuse. I use the coal slag over and over many times. You'll want to build an enclosure of some sort with tarps around the sides to retain the media for collection. A tarp on the ground makes it a lot easier to sweep up but don't let the nozzle hit the tarp or it will shred it to nothing immediately. I'm not aware of any environmental regs that will cause an issue in Canada. I use my pot blaster in the driveway but the nearest neighbor is 200' or more away. The media runs out in the pot fairly quickly and if you have a lot of things to strip, it can be a slow process to sweep it up, screen it and put it back in the pot over and over. Works fantastic though. If you have large pieces and surface areas to strip, consider using a "strip disc" on die grinder or angle grinder to get some of the paint and primer off first. Can save a lot of time before turning to the pot blaster to get it down to 100% bare all over. Strip discs are pretty dusty though.

Notwithstanding the current border closure, if you live near enough to the border, you could consider opening up a mailbox across the border, get stuff shipped there and then go pick it up. Not only is stuff generally a lot cheaper in the US, when you come back across the border you won't get pulled over to pay taxes or duty up to a certain amount per person (I can't recall the current limit). We do that all the time and the only I got sent inside was when we had a $500 computer. We've saved thousands of $$ over the years.

And, you'll also need a decent compressor setup. I don't think less than a 60 gallon 5HP will cut it. You'll need to dry the air too. A run of copper piping after the compressor and before the regulator(s) and filters is a common way to do it. Lots of examples on this forum.

FWIW, depending on what you are doing, note that once the metal is down to bare steel, it starts to "flash rust" fairly quickly which can ruin a paint job. You may want to spray epoxy primer on it asap or if you don't care a whole lot about it looking nice and lasting, rattle can rust converter paint works. There are some tips and tricks about using epoxy you'd need to study up on.

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New-cyclone-1-pcs-cyclone-dust-collector-Filter-Turbocharged-Cyclone.jpg_q50.jpg
 
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younghandyman

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Dec 18, 2017
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Blasting metal...... Size? Small car parts? Lawn furniture? Car frames? Structural steel?

As a hobby or as a means of income?

As a hobby, it probably doesn't matter other than for the fact that pressure pots work better than gravity feed pots. Past that, not really much difference from one cheap blaster to the next as they're all likely manufactured in one of a few Chinese factories.

As a means of income, forget all the harbor freight and princess auto stuff. It's all painfully slow and far too maintenance intensive to even consider for any sort of volume blasting. It'd be the equivalent of washing box van trucks with a toothbrush. Doesn't matter how hard you work. To have prices competitive with others in the trade, you can't generate enough money per hour to even make minimum wage.



Curious why you say this? We would barely have to pay overhead like a regular shop would as we'd be paying a verysmall portion of a bigger shop. There are lots of people making money powder coating wheels in my area, we didn't want to get into that as there is too much competition so thought we'd do this.


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brownbagg

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if you starting a business you need to look into that water jet blaster
 

myredracer

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Curious why you say this? We would barely have to pay overhead like a regular shop would as we'd be paying a verysmall portion of a bigger shop. There are lots of people making money powder coating wheels in my area, we didn't want to get into that as there is too much competition so thought we'd do this.


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I agree with metlmunchr, if you are going to be doing this on a regular/daily basis to make an income, a pot blaster won't work. Just waaay waay too slow. Same with a floor standing media blast cabinet. You need commercial/industrial size equipment. If you had an auto custom fab shop and needed to do only occasional media blasting, maybe.

Have you ever been inside a professional powder coating shop or media blasting shop. Those guys charge a fortune for their time & work because of all the equipment cost, overhead and consumables.
 
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didit

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That's a tough way to make a buck. I've done enough of it over the years and it is one of my least favorite things to do. I have been retired a long time now but still have enough equipment to media blast at home for my own projects. I have a blast cabinet as well as several gravity feed outfits. They are OK for small cleanup jobs or prepping small areas for welding but painfully slow for doing any real work.
You will need a good pressure pot with an adequate clean and dry air supply. The pressure pot blaster I use in my home shop, I built out of a propane tank from a jitney. I've been using it for over 40 years now although only seasonally on my own projects. I use one of those 10' X 12' steel roof gazebos from Canadian Tire on a cement pad to blast in. It contains the media and makes it easy to re-use. I use a variety of ceramic nozzles and built a system to feed fresh air to my protective hood. You will have a fair investment in equipment and lots of trial and error time spent on this endeavor. I wish you the best of luck!
 
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ZRX61

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I can tell you right now the painters are going to be pissed at:
A) Your plan to "build a little area so that we can collect the media that we're blasting"
B) Suddenly finding they have to stop painting to allow their compressor to catch up because you blasted something & took all the air.

You mentioned patio furniture, so that precludes most cabinets. The place I use for stuff that big has a dedicated room that's about 500sq ft. The also run fairly stout Mattei hydrovane compressors that are at least $4k. They have these spiffy automated machines the size 10-12ft diameter where they load all the stuff on revolving mesh table, close the door & walk away while it all gets blasted clean.

My home hobby set up just for personal stuff is probably five times the set up you're thinking will suffice... & that includes 3 different grades of glass bead, different types of plastic, 2 grades of aluminum oxide & also crushed walnut shells.
 
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younghandyman

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This is supposed to be side income just doing a few jobs on the weekend, not meant to be a full out business. The only reason we can be competitive is because of the shop space we have and the other respurces.

There is extra space in the garage which is not currently being used which we plan on using.


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ZRX61

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This is supposed to be side income just doing a few jobs on the weekend, not meant to be a full out business. The only reason we can be competitive is because of the shop space we have and the other respurces.

There is extra space in the garage which is not currently being used which we plan on using.

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In that case make sure you're using the correct media for the job. Lots of people say "I need this sandblasted" & end up with a pile of scrap when they should have said "I need this cleaned" & leave it up to the guy holding the gun to make sure he uses the correct stuff.
Go for it.
 

sberry

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I have seen guys do this, some worked and some didn't. Maybe you can sales up some work which is good and if a guy had to advertise a little would have a day, Sandblast Saturday and list a few hours where you could sit on it for walk in work.
People like predictable, I saw a couple could have made good but they were so hard to get hold of, unpredictable, not on time and it is a lot to manage but some specific walk in where someone is there would work.
 

BTG

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If you want to blast parts as a hobby a $350 blaster may work for you, but coming from a guy who owns and runs a successful metal stripping business, you better add a few zeros to the end of that number if you even want to make a few nickels. First off, you will need a decent pressure pot blaster. You can find them used, but even a 10 year old pot with good control valves will run you 1-2k. To run said presssure pot, you"ll need lots of air. Not the kind of air that a 5 or 10hp hardware store compressor makes. Depending on nozzle size, you'll need 100-200 cfm of air. Minimum compressor I ran a pot with a relatively small 1/4 nozzle, was a 30 hp screw. Those are 8-10k new. Are you planning to blast inside or outside? An inside blast room requires a dedicated dust collection and air exchange system. You'll also need good lighting, metal or rubber flooring, and a fresh air filter and hood. If you blast outside, you can skip the dust collection, but you will be cold in those Toronto winters. Also you'll have to deal with local and federal regulations. Outside blasting also makes it difficult to reclaim any media. Crushed glass may be cheap, but when you piss away hundreds of lbs a day, it adds up. Reclaiming media even 2-3 times is way more economical.
I'm not trying to discourage you, but blasting efficiently is a product of expensive equipment and lots of air and media. As said before, we charge a lot because we can do it much faster and with better results. I've done the cheap blaster, metal shed thing way back when and it was break even at best. Unfortunately to make any $$, you need to spend to get good commercial equipment and learn how to use it.
 
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younghandyman

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I appreciate all the replies.

Regarding some of the comments, the truck shop runs mechanic tools (air ratchets, impact wrenches) and a commercial sandblaster for big dump trucks, I don't think the compressor will be the issue. We will be using everything during their downtime and working around their schedule. They also have dedicated space for painting and sandblasting, that's all covered as we'll have access to it during downtime.

Just trying to find a blaster that will meet our requirements.



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younghandyman

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The target is to make $3-400 per weekend, nothing more so not really looking for something in the thousands yet


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