Modifying Harbor Freight Sandblast Cabinet

[forbigpicture]

Great info Don, will put this on my (very long) list of things to do....
Thanks for taking the time to share...

 

[smallfoot]

Thanks for taking the time Don!

 

[donsrods]

Great write up Don
Thanks for taking the time to fill us in on the process and parts list.

Great info Don, will put this on my (very long) list of things to do....
Thanks for taking the time to share...

Thanks for taking the time Don!

You're welcome, guys. As I mentioned, I can't take 100% credit for these modifications, I found some excellent videos on YouTube. Here is just one video, jump ahead to about 6:00 and save yourself some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fhz4S9qX-o&list=PLA5We2lR3ZTmzO0zBR3xB7hr2FUsQWSiy&index=1

It shows the set up of the cabinet pretty well in this video.


Oh, by the way, you will notice that in some of the pictures of our cabinet, the shop vac is on the left side of the bottom shelf, and in others, it is on the right. We keep making changes to fit our needs better, and we found there was more room on the right side for the shop vac and the hose ran at a better angle.

Those two white 5 gallon buckets in the picture are new tubs of media we have stored. As we need more media in the hopper, or if we want to use a different grit type, we will scoop some out and dump it in the hopper.

You will also notice a white plastic plug on the bottom of that IDS valve that is installed in the very bottom trap door. When you want to empty the hopper, you simply put a container under that plug, remove it, and the media will fall out of the hopper.

 

[Ricks Garage]

Iknow this is an old thread....
Moisture is a killer in a media cabinet, even though you have a trap on your compressor it WILL not stop all of the moisture.
I have modified my Harbor Freight bench blaster with these mods, adding a paper replaceable filter did the trick. I attached it to the left side of the cabinet to where I could attached my air hose. The only problem I ran into was the air pedal hose fittings are backwards (you cannot exchange them), This I have to redo and put on longer hoses.

Weld on ********** [

 

[donsrods]

I just thought I would update this old thread of mine. We got the entire thing all done, and, after some dialing in on how much media to put in the hopper (found out too much is too much, it just pours out of the gun instead of blowing out under a lot of pressure...…...about a couple of cups in the hopper seems right) and playing with the air pressure, we got it to work pretty well.

My son Don has gotten the most use of it, he is repowering and rebuilding his Baja boat, and he has been blasting brackets and stuff like that before painting them. It really did a pretty good job and the vacuum system works perfectly. Not a drop of dust or sand comes out, and you are able to see what you are doing because the vacuum sucks out the dust, keeping it clear inside.

Overall, it was worth the effort and money. Still not what one of those high dollar/big cabinets are like, but good enough for what we do with it.

 

[Neto]

I'm curious if you have ever used a pressure feed media blaster, and how you would compare the two system designs. Years ago I worked in a plating shop, and often spent whole days standing at a pressure feed blasting cabinet. Of course with that sort of commercial environment, we had huge (screw type) air compressors, so we had lots of air pressure, and the blasting nozzles on those systems were much larger diameter than the commonly available blasting systems, so I suppose you could say I was spoiled in terms of how fast you could clean up a part. (We had one that we only used glass bead in, and the other was for aluminum oxide, which was rougher on the part you were cleaning up, but also of course much faster on paint, rust & scale.)

We (at home) had one of those cheap out-door type bucket siphon feed blasters, and the idea of blasting a whole car frame with one of those was just laughable. Later there was a fire in the plating shop, and I was allowed to cut the pressure tanks out of the blast cabinets before they were hauled off for scrap, and I set up a system at home. Of course I had to cut the nozzle size way down to compensate for the small air compressor my dad had, but it worked much better than the siphon feed deal, and even better after my brother bought & installed real nozzles. (I had been using just what ever fittings I could find in the parts drawer.)

Recently I bought a used pressure blaster in an auction, and I'd like to build or buy some sort of cabinet, for working on smaller parts. Your description of the dust control measures you built into yours are especially helpful.

(The commercial systems at work had a system where there was a sealed cabinet in the back that had bags that the air went through. When it stopped clearing the air, you had to go back there and jerk on a lever that beat the dust off of the bags, and it dropped to the bottom of that compartment, which periodically had to be cleaned out. The media dropped into a hopper and went through a fine metal filter that had a vibrator attached to it. From there it dropped into the hopper at the top of the pressure tank, and stayed there until you released the foot pedal, at which time the tank would depressurize and the top seal on the tank would open and allow the media to drop back into the pressure tank. Hit the foot pedal again, and the tank would seal and be pressurized again, for another cycle of blasting.)