Blast Cabinet

 "A person's worth is measured by the worth of what he values." - Marcus Aurelius

Last year at Christmas (or my birthday in April, I forget which), I received a sand-blasting cabinet.  It's been sitting in the air compressor room in the shipping box since then.  Among the many reasons that it was never unpacked and assembled are time, energy, and motivation.  Mostly the issue was time, though.

But it is now "vacation" time!  We aren't really the traveling sort any longer.  I suppose that's partially because we now live where people come to when they are on vacation.  Also we've lost the person we trusted to house-sit for us and care for the critters.  The short explanation:  Vacation is not a time to travel, but to get stuff done.

For one reason or another, I didn't think to take photos of the assembly process, which is a bit unusual.  I used the bed of the truck for assembly, because the cabinet is much too wide to assemble on the work bench.

 In the image below, it's mostly assembled except for the window.

All that clutter in the background came out of the air compressor room, and now that the room is coming together, that stuff will be stored somewhere else - probably on the mezzanine.  It's been a long, tedious, and demoralizing project :)

Below:  Looking into the air compressor room.  It's getting a bit crowded in there.  I haven't commissioned the yellow parts washer at the left yet, either.  It still needs to be filled with liquid.

One of the issues people run into when using blast cabinets is dust.  Sand-blasting uses air pressure to blast a stream of grit onto the surface of metal.  This air tends to pressurize the cabinet and causes dust to leak out every seam of the cabinet.  To prevent this, you connect an industrial vacuum up and place a suction on the cabinet.  This puts the cabinet at a negative pressure and collects dust and grit that would otherwise leak out the seams.

However it doesn't take long at all for that dust and grit to foul the vacuum cleaner's filter, and then you have to stop blasting so you can deal with that - over and over and over.  You need to figure out a way to remove that dust and grit before it reaches the vacuum cleaner.

There are a bunch of home-gamer systems you can build from a couple of 5 gallon buckets - similar to the one I made for the air compressor tank water blow-down.  

 I had been planning to build one of these, but guess what?  When I went to Harbor Freight to pick up a bucket of sand blast media, they had everything needed in a kit for $45.  Why go to the trouble and time to DIY, when the time and energy available is already short?  I bought the kit and assembled it.  

Below:  The black hose connects to the blast cabinet, and the cyclone swirls the dust downwards into the bucket.  The shop vacuum connects to the top of the cyclone.  Cleaned air comes out the top, and dust settles into the bucket.

I tested the cyclone out on a pile of sawdust, and none of the sawdust made it past the cyclone and into the vacuum cleaner - it all settled out in the red bucket.  If it works with light stuff like sawdust, it will certainly work with heavy grit.

I may need to modify the blast cabinet a bit - we shall see how well it works out of the box.  They make an inexpensive assembly that helps to fluidize and meter the blast media into the gun.