Vapor Blasting Cabinet

[archimeech]

I hope all of you have seen the fairly new concept of Vapor Blasting or Vapor Honing.

If not, here's a video of the premier US company:

Basically it's a sandblasting booth that uses water to move the media and introduces high pressure air at the nozzle. It's incredible. I have some friends that have a vintage motorcycle shop and cleaning/polishing the aluminum parts is truly a pain. So, a couple other buddies of mine gave me a restaurant sink/counter and a bunch of 3/16" stainless sheets from a demo job. The first thing I thought was, I'm building my own Vapor Blasting cabinet. I don't have $12,000 to buy my own and I want one big enough to put an entire motorcycle frame into (why build small, right?). So, I hope to have it finished soon.

[archimeech]

So I started with an idea of what I wanted based on the items I had at hand. A sink/counter out of an old IHOP and a bunch of stainless sheets a buddy of mine gave me.

[archimeech]

just a few more of the materials and the start of the build.

[PJs]

Nice Project Archimeech! Look forward to seeing your build. Was shocked at the CFM (15-20) requirements of the commercial machines and all their models use that spec. Also couldn't seem to find what medium they are using and what grits are available.

Thanks for posting this! ~PJ

[archimeech]

Thanks!

Yeah, it's a high CFM, but I'm using a sump pump that gives me about 1/2 that and restricting it down 75%. I'm also using more pressure on the air side.We'll see. Might need to go with a larger pump.

The blast media usually is glass bead. If you want to scour aluminum oxide off that's really crusted on hard, you can go with a crushed glass instead.

Nice Project Archimeech! Look forward to seeing your build. Was shocked at the CFM (15-20) requirements of the commercial machines and all their models use that spec. Also couldn't seem to find what medium they are using and what grits are available.

Thanks for posting this! ~PJ

[archimeech]

Thanks!

Yeah, it's a high CFM, but I'm using a sump pump that gives me about 1/2 that and restricting it down 75%. I'm also using more pressure on the air side.We'll see. Might need to go with a larger pump.

The blast media usually is glass bead. If you want to scour aluminum oxide off that's really crusted on hard, you can go with a crushed glass instead.

Nice Project Archimeech! Look forward to seeing your build. Was shocked at the CFM (15-20) requirements of the commercial machines and all their models use that spec. Also couldn't seem to find what medium they are using and what grits are available.

Thanks for posting this! ~PJ

[C-Bag]

Interesting, never heard of this before. There's quite a few folks DIY'ing this with some interesting results. There was a site that talked about abrasives:

Abrasives | Vixen Wet Blasting

It sounded like walnut hulls and olive stones are particularly interesting in that they work a low pressure. Is there some reason you can't use a regulated down pressure washer for the water pressure? I'm a noob here so just asking. There were several schemes to put then media into a slurry to be I would assume, siphoned into the pressure stream. None of which looked so sophisticated one of us couldn't hack it

I like the idea of no dust, but the OP has it wired in that he has all that stainless to work with. I'm definitely going to keep an eye on this to see how it goes. Thanks for posting.

[archimeech]

I've looked through a lot of builds and also the commercial booths. I settled on what I could find, scrounge, or dig up. To date, I probably have around $500 invested in parts, Argon, cutting wheels, pumps, lights and what not. I like to think of it as Karmic Tool Fabrication. Whatever I can get my hands on goes into the pile and then I see what comes out the other end! lol

C-bag. A lot of folks use a pressure washer for their power, but I found a gun and hose that uses a lower pressure water/slurry and introduces compressed air at the gun to increase pressure. The bottom of my build isn't in the drawn down hopper configuration so we'll see how well the slurry is agitated. I may need to introduce a secondary pump to keep it all mixing down below.

[Ed ke6bnl]

I wonder how this differs from the Abrasive add on I purchased for my pressure washer it when on the end of the gun without a tip and drew in the SAND and I used it to blast the entire bed on my old truck. I only paid about $30 from Walmart at the time for the add on. and worked great. NOT the smooth finish I see in the video though.

[C-Bag]

Yup, sand is good for taking off paint in a hurry, but it is not a smooth finish though. But I'll bet it was great for putting bed liner on to though. The link I found and posted was interesting to read through about the different media and the finish they provide.

How did your Wally World set up feed the sand Ed? Was it like a drip cup attachment or? I wonder how your setup would do with glass beads? BTW is was pointed out that the glass media HF sells is really crushed glass so does not provide the finish real beads do. As with all things,the devil is in the details.