Soda Blasting... in a cabinet?

[Gearhead_42]

So I'm in the market for a blast cabinet, and was wondering if anyone had tried using soda blasting in theirs? I like the "use it on anything" nature, and 90% of the stuff I'd do would be aluminum cleaning and mild surface prep/rust removal...

Thoughts?

 

[engnerdan]

It won't work for several reasons. When soda is used for blasting media it explodes on contact, the exploding is what does the cleaning, turning it into a super fine dust that is not good for anything. The other problem is siphon blasters use way too much baking soda making it very expensive to use.

I bought a soda blaster from http://www.ace-sandblasting.com/soda-blasting.html and the amount of soda it actually uses is very small. I have been blasting engine parts for over an hour and I have maybe gone through 20 lbs of soda.

-Dan

 

[Gearhead_42]

Hmmmm...

Makes sense for trying to use soda media in a generic siphon cabinet. I notice (thanks for that link btw) that Ace actually markets a cabinet designed for soda... So I'm guessing that with the right gun (and a decent dust collector) it works ok in a cabinet environment...

Might be worth trying anyway

-Dan (yes, me too )