small blaster cabinet

[metal2]

Hi I have a bench top sand blaster cabinet it came with 4 ceramic nozzles like 4-5-6-7 mm can anyone explain to me the purpose of this?
thanks paul

[jere]

I assume to vary the spread patterns of the media you are blasting with.

[sunnyslope]

Old thread, but the different orifice size nozzles are for different size media.

Smaller nozzle = smaller / more fine / higher grit media.

I have a Harbor Freight cabinet and use the smallest nozzle with sodium bicarbonate media, works pretty well considering everything I’ve ever read in 40 years I’ve known about soda blasting says it won’t work. The soda blasts apart much quicker than the normal media so really need a vacuum / reclaimer setup to pull the dust and also helps with being able to see in the cabinet.
Sodium bicarb coats the metal and helps keep from rusting as fast as silicon / aluminum but will attract water in the air and make rusting worse if not cleaned off (I use water and little dish soap then dry thoroughly) then oiled, coated, painted, etc. pretty soon depending on your ambient humidity. We’ve had super-humidity this year and I had a couple parts flash rust and had to clean again.

I have an HF pressure pot for silicon / sand media that I swap the nozzles depending on the grit I’m using. The aluminum oxide is 60-80 grit (I think) so use the big one, for the fine sand media I use the small nozzle.

HF also has extra nozzle sets for the different types of blasters (cabinet as opposed to pot-style) so it’s pretty easy to experiment by swapping nozzles if the three that (usually) come with the blasters.