Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Sanding, rusticating, sandblasting, buffing, etc. All here.
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DMI
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Location: Northern Ireland

Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by DMI »

Hail and well met from Northern Ireland,

It's been a while since this came up so I thought I'd bring it up again before buying the kit.

I have a 200lt (50ish gallon) 15cfm/115psi compressor and from here and youtube I'm leaning towards a pot with fine beads (although I intend to try different media) as this seems to be a workable setup. I have £500 left to spend so thoughts on cabinets, gun and nozzles are also welcome.

Something which I have picked up on is replacing the standard fittings and tubes with 1/2" or 3/4" ones, anyone tried this?


David.
Massis
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Re: Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by Massis »

IF you already have a 200liter compressor, simply adding a cheap cabinet should be enough to get you going. Those cabinets come equipped with gun, nozzle and siphon setup. No reason to go for a pot. Simply pour a couple of kg's of beads in the base of your cabinet and you're good to go.

I've got the older version of this one:
https://www.hbm-machines.com/be-nl/p/hb ... bine-zwart
DocAitch
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Re: Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by DocAitch »

Think about lighting as well. My $100 cabinet doesn’t have a light, and I make do with a Bright LED light outside the window.
DocAitch
"Hettinger, if you stamp 'hand made' on a dog turd, some one will buy it."
-Charles Hollyday, pipe maker, reluctant mentor, and curmudgeon
" Never show an idiot an unfinished pipe!"- same guy
caskwith
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Re: Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by caskwith »

I tried a pot on a similarly sized compressor and it was a pain in the arse.
Massis
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Re: Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by Massis »

DocAitch wrote: Fri May 06, 2022 5:01 pm Think about lighting as well. My $100 cabinet doesn’t have a light, and I make do with a Bright LED light outside the window.
DocAitch
Mine came with a TL-light but it was rubbish. I've simply changed it to a cheap heavy duty LED-strip glued to a piece of wood and that's been working fine for a couple of years now.
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DMI
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Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 8:48 pm
Location: Northern Ireland

Re: Blasting. Pot or Siphon?

Post by DMI »

So having played around a bit I'm still not sure which method I prefer.

Media 3:1 xfine glass & chil iron.

Working with the pot was improved greatly by increasing the bore of the feeder etc on the bottom, during the process I also discovered a 1" round bit of solder splat in the pot which kept blocking the thing up. The modification allowed the use of larger/coarser blasting media including the local interstadial shell/sand deposits which is great for cleaning concrete.

Using the siphon system is easy, uses a gun I can get on with but the surplus sand supply tends to become airborne during blasting so you can't see anything, the built in extractor helps a bit.

There's still some experimentation with guns and nozzles required, my ideal would be something akin to a pencil airbrush.
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