5 Tips to Avoid a Sandblasting Cabinet Mess

Sandblasting cabinets shouldn’t leak abrasive into the surrounding workspace. It may sound like an impossible task, but only machines purchased beyond their Daily Duty Cycle (DDC) get messy. Most often, this is often caused by someone buying a sandblasting cabinet from a company that does not understand or care about DDC, only how much money they can make selling a blaster. 

ProTip: Instead of asking what does this mediablaster® cost, a better question is, “what is the Daily Duty Cycle for this machine configuration?”

Avoid a Sandblasting Cabinet Mess with These 5 Tips

Avoiding a Blasting Cabinet Mess comes down to three things: cabinet configuration, quality of construction, and performing some regular maintenance. The following lists five critical things you should do to avoid machine mess:

• Always purchase a Sandblasting cabinet that can handle more than your current Daily Duty Cycle. It is easy to outgrow any blasting cabinet when you realize how useful they become.
• Buy the most Dust Collector Surface area you can afford.
• Keep the Dust Collector Cleaning Cycle Easy, and Fast. But do not settle for manual filter cleaning cycle using a spring mounted bedframe to shake the assembly manually.
• Most abrasives have a maximum recycle. This is the number of times the media can exit the nozzle before it is no longer viable. This maximum recycle rate is related to: the abrasive delivery type, the hardness of the parts being cleaned, the hardness of the abrasive, and the actual blasting pressure. Remember, your car oil has a maximum recycle per miles driven before you drain it and replace! See this post about How to Determine Blast Cabinet Recycle Rates for more information.
• Schedule occasional machine purging. Any Industrial Dry Sandblasting Cabinet used for fast cleaning will have at least 100 pounds of abrasive in the system. More is better to slow down the recycle rate, but too much can also pack around the flow control valve. You need to purge a sandblasting cabinet when the process is slow and dusty inside during operation. Most applications have abrasive recycle rates for about 8 hours before purging is needed. If we assume 50% of the gun blasting time on during an 8-hour shift, then the operating is about two days. Yes, 200 to 250 pounds per 40 hours of operation is a good target.

Why Does Mediablaster® Maintenance Matter? 

Not paying attention to the maintenance required on a sandblasting cabinet is a recipe for disaster. Not cleaning the dust collector and not purging the abrasive can lead to lower blower cfm air movement in the dust collector, a dusty cabinet, and dust simply following the opening of the door to settle around the area around the cabinet. If we assume you’re using a well-constructed cabinet, then it is often not the sandblasting cabinet but the lack of proper maintenance that leads to a messy workspace.

If you have a well-made cabinet and regularly perform maintenance, check out how to reduce poor cabinet visibility here. 

To Sum It Up

Many variables affect the amount of sandblasting cabinet maintenance required. Some of these variables are the type of abrasive being used, blasting pressure, blasting gun cfm being used, hardness of the part, hardness of the blast media, and more. If you are buying a Media Blast® Abrasive Blasting Cabinet we will extensively discuss any optional features that can be added to your machine configuration to meet normal operation for your application. 

Contact us today to learn more.