Blasting Cabinet Filter Maintenance Explained

Blasting cabinet filters can be one of three types: Air Inlet Filters, Air Regulator Filter, and Dust Collector Filters. Dust Collector filters come in two main materials: cloth filters or cartridge filters. Dust Collector Filters are the most important.

The 3 Types of Blasting Cabinet Filters

1. Air Inlet Filters keep the dust and abrasive inside the cabinet. They also allow the dust collector blower to bring clean air into the cabinet creating visibility. Always remember to clean these filters occasionally so the air flows remain at high volumes, creating good cabinet visibility.
2. The Air Pressure Regulator has an air filter which filters the compressed air being used. Just imaging not having one and blasting an expensive part requiring a smooth almost mirror finish. You could be hitting the part surface with rust sloughed off the inside of the pipe supply. This filter can also become plugged by oil from an older worn-out compressor. When this happens, you notice the pressure you normally feel on the gun becoming less and less. Time to simply change the part or in some cases just replace the entire air regulator.
3. Dust Collector Filters are used to filter out dust coming off a part during the blasting operation. The cabinet exhaust blower creates the negative pressure required for any blasting cabinet, wet or dry. The best dust collector filter advice we can give is: the bigger the better.

Buy the most dust collector filter area, measured in square feet, you can find for your spending budget. This is because the more filter area, the less filter cleaning is required and the slower the air speed through the filter. This equals better filter performance.

The 2 Types of Blasting Cabinet Filter Materials

1. Cloth filters are the least used of all Abrasive Blasting Cabinet filters. They are large and store the least amount of dust, almost all are positive pressure. Most require manual cleaning by the operator wiggling a bag support frame that is spring mounted, or just looking like a picture frame. This moves and stretches any cloth woven material allowing dust to work and pass through the filter cloth into the area around the blasting cabinet when you turn the dust collector back on. If you are using cloth you want to replace it yearly. Cloth gets hard because of the humidity moved through the material. The air flow out of the cabinet lessons, the visibility lessons and the messy area starts to happen. Cloth is the least expensive dust collector you can buy for almost any Abrasive Blasting Cabinet.
2. Filter cartridges are the best Blasting Cabinet Filter. You can place about 20 times the filter area in the same footprint as 10 sq.ft. of cloth. If you understand how big tubed radios were in the early years before transistors, you can imagine this construction. Big old, tubed radios really didn’t do much, just radio. Transistor radios do more in a much smaller space and dust collection dust storage space is what you want, not large, limited dust storage.

Real World Example: Purchased a Blasting Cabinet that has the gun cfm size, blower size, separator reclaimer, and filter area size all matched together for your DDC, Daily Duty Cycle, you will have a great blasting experience, great visibility, and a clean area. The cartridge allows for semi-automatic cleaning using a vibrator or reverse pulse cycle using compressed air. All this is better than wiggling a manually operated handle back and forth used in the same era as tube radios. This also means slower air velocity, better filter efficiency through the filters, easier cleaning and a clean area around the cabinet.

To Sum It Up

There are lots of different blasting cabinet filters. Plan to change your filters, any type, yearly if you use your blasting cabinet. Some filters using the large industrial gun sizes may need changed more often. Keep in mind that using a filter 20 times smaller means you should clean the filter 20 times more often. Also, easy-to-clean cartridge filters are more likely to be property maintained than other filters. Finally, never use wet air in a dry blasting cabinet, it turns any filter type to plugging mud.

A Better Filter Efficiency with Media Blast & Abrasives

Media Blast’s production machines and negative pressure dust collectors are easy to service and offer a larger filter dust storage area for maximum use between filter cleanings. If you’re not sure which blasting cabinet is right for you, check out our buying guide or give us a call!