Sandblast cabinet enlargement

[sossol]

Clarke brand, but same as most Chinese tabletop units. Identical to the Rural King branded one.
The white panels are from the same drier shell I used for my lathe tray. The L-shaped white panels are flanged and spot-welded to the original cabinet. The rest are fixed with automotive foam tape and bolts. I removed the rear panel and lowered it to provide structural support.
The tape merely hides the seams. I was planning to paint the seams, but I found this tape and thought I'd go for a black box vibe instead.


A few in-progress shots.
Before I bent the flanges:

After plug-welding the sides together:

Checking for size:
.

I'll update this when I get the lighting in, the ventilation installed (where the rectangular lint screen opening is), and the new glass installed (it will overhang the top).

[C-Bag]

I'm particularly interested in how you do the pickup/feed system. The little siphon tube setup that came with it works, barely. But an external valve pickup like on the bigger units I know would be better but I've not seen the details of how to make that work more consistently. More than anything this is the upgrade I'd like to do to my HFT tabletop blaster. BTW, what kind of media are you going to use

[sossol]

I'm particularly interested in how you do the pickup/feed system. The little siphon tube setup that came with it works, barely. But an external valve pickup like on the bigger units I know would be better but I've not seen the details of how to make that work more consistently. More than anything this is the upgrade I'd like to do to my HFT tabletop blaster. BTW, what kind of media are you going to use

I never had a problem with the pickup tube itself, so for now I'll re-use it. My biggest problem was that the media would not flow to the pickup tube's opening, and there's no good way to funnel it without adding height to the cabinet. I'll make something up when I get that far.
I relocated the air inlet to the upper front corner and install a double swivel at either end of the flexible hose inside the cabinet. These keep the hose out of the way and prevent kinking.

As for media, I just use the black stuff from Menard's. It's cheap and works well enough.

[sossol]

I haven't done much with this cabinet because reasons, but I added new latches this weekend. The hooks are made from some locking clips from parts of the hanging bracket of a microwave oven/stove vent fan. The toggles are CS-brand (Chinese) DeStaCo copies.

[DIYer]

Thanks sossol! We've added your Sandblast Cabinet Enlargement to our Cleaning category,
as well as to your builder page: sossol's Homemade Tools. Your receipt:

Sandblast Cabinet Enlargement by sossol

tags: cabinet, sandblaster, modification

[skibo]

sossol, I had a friend who used a HFT 40 pound pressure blaster tank, he used glass or sand and it worked better than expected, and a lot better than the other way. After the bottom was got full of sand he had a 1" ball valve he with a nipple welded to the bottom of the blast cabinet to dump the sand into a bucket to recapture the sand, he used a typical filter screen before returning the sand back to the pressure tank. I to have had a table top HF blast cabinet for around 5 years and yet to even use it, also have a new 40 pound pressure tank, I just might revamp mine and hook it up to glass bead some vintage bike parts for my old bikes!
skibo