Blast cabinet visibility is achieved by removing dust from the cabinet interior. Dust is created when the surface of the part is cleaned and mixes with the abrasive in micron-size dust particles to greatly reduce cabinet visibility. Poor visibility is most often the result of the lack of a critical machine feature.
Why Poor Blast Cabinet Visibility Matters
Poor blast cabinet visibility may not impact occasional blasting projects very much, but as blasting time increases it can become a serious problem. A natural response to decreased visibility is to bring the part being blasted and the nozzle closer to the view window. That’s fine, until you realize that your abrasive is now impacting the inside of the window and it’s getting etched. Now the poor visibility that you were experiencing only when you operated the machine more than it’s intended Daily Duty Cycle (DDC) is permanent.
The Top Solution for Poor Visibility
Adequate dust collector blower cfm volume, the air being removed from the cabinet per minute measured in cubic feet per minute, is the single reason you can’t see inside a blasting cabinet. This cfm volume creates air changes inside the cabinet for improved blast cabinet visibility, and this happens at a very low rate when your machine isn’t using a separator reclaimer.
ProTip: A Separator Reclaimer removes only the dust and retains the good abrasive inside the cabinet. The separator is like an oil filter in your car engine constantly removing unwanted material from the oil.
More than likely, inexpensive cabinets sold online by Tool Houses do not have a separator reclaimer. These cabinets are small in inside chamber size and a separator reclaimer takes up important cabinet blasting chamber area. Normally users want a blasting cabinet that is self-contained and includes a dust collector, blower, dust storage filters, and separator reclaimer, all matched to the machine Daily Duty Cycle (DDC).
Real World Example: Most models sold online today are rated for less than 30 minutes of operation per 8 hours. Operating these machines more than the recommended DDC results in slow part cleaning and poor blast cabinet visibility.
If you do want to use an existing dust collector already purchased, need to know the duct size connected to your existing cabinet. From this, we can match our Patented Separator to the cfm volume or, we can tell you what cfm is required by any existing dust collector you might already have. We match the separator reclaimer to the gun cfm size to the dust collector cfm volume to the DDC.
A Few Other Culprits
There are four other common culprits of poor blast cabinet visibility if you’re already using a properly sized separator reclaimer. Check out this post to learn more about them.
To Sum It Up
Media Blast manufactures more than 170 different machines, and none of our blasting cabinets are built without a separator reclaimer except our wet blasting cabinets that do not require a separator reclaimer.
Our team of experts is happy to help troubleshoot why you are experiencing poor blast cabinet visibility and how we can help eliminate it. Contact us today and we’ll help get you back on track.