Anyone know anything about sand blasting cabinets?

[Avocet]

I've been thinking of getting a sand blasting cabinet for various bits and pieces of rusty car. Plenty to choose from, on the likes of eBay and Machine Mart. However, most that are of the size I'm thinking about, seem to want an airflow of around 10 cubic feet per minute.

I have a cheap Machine Mart 2hp compressor with a 25 litre receiver, rated at about 7 CFM However, that seems to be "piston displacement". In reality, I doubt I even get 3 CFM out of it at 100 PSI! What's more, it can't run continuously. Only about a 50% duty cycle.

However, I also have an ancient (1960s, I think!) 2hp Hydrovane, rated at 5.7 CFM, but I think this one really DOES deliver that at 100 PSI - and of course, can run continuously.

Would I be right in thinking that with a blasting cabinet, if I use too small a compressor, all that will happen is that I'll either have to stop frequently to let the receiver re-fill, or I'll just have to live with a relatively narrow jet of sand? Or is it more complicated than that?

 

[Brigadier]

Knowing nothing about budget etc, would something like this be worthy of consideration?

Also, by using "pre-filters" (sacrificial filters upstream of the expensive stuff), you prolong the lifespan of the unit (and the more expensive filters within).

 

[Burnerman]

With sand blasting, you need a huge CFM of air.......the pressure of it is secondary so you'll need a huge reservoir to cope with that.
On occasion when I use my needle descaler the compressor (14 cfm, 100l tank) is running almost constantly so like me, it gets hot and bothered.
Unfortunately I think you'd be disappointed with the set up you have, but I'd love to be corrected!
John

 

[Brigadier]

Sorry @Avocet , I thought you were talking about clearing the cabinet during blasting.

 

[Avocet]

Thanks all. Interesting link, Brigadier, but yeah, probably out of my budget for the amount of time I'd be using it. I'd probably just take it out of the garage and use it in the open air.

Burnerman, yeah, I feared that. The Hydrovane doesn't mind running continuously (it does that anyway, and was designed to), but output is limited. I did use it to power a big flat-bed sander when I was sanding a boat down, and it did very well, but the sander was running a bit slower than intended.