Did you know it’s best to use a specially designed sandblasting cabinet for soda blasting? That’s right. Many sandblasting cabinets are built for cutting abrasives that rip and tear, remove coatings, polishing, and make parts ready for painting and plating. These are precisely what soda blasting, a do no harm abrasive media, aims to avoid.
ProTip: We prefer the term “Media Blasting” to “Sandblasting” because it encompasses the wide range of abrasive media used in our industry. Most cabinets use glass beads, not sand. And many applications call for exotic abrasives like plastic and soda. This nuanced terminology is where our company name comes from.
What is Special About Soda Blasting?
Soda Blasting is a special process that leaves the surface being blasted the same as it was when it was new. There is no texturing, no polishing and more important no contamination of the part surface because soda is soft and also soluble. If it feels wrong to you, then it must be assumed that you are not using soda correctly.
When you understand that most abrasives can crudely, plasma cut metal during the blasting process using a direct pressure delivery, you understand how important leaving the part with no metallurgy changes can be. Add the soluble characteristics of soda, and many critical blasting applications come to light such as bearing races, motorcycle engine case halves, internal engine parts and more to include overhead cam engines.
Soda blasting becomes very interesting in part because SOLUBLE equals SOLVABLE.
Mediablasters with Ghostflow® Technology
At Media Blast® we developed our patented Ghostflow® Technology. This is a unique process for soda delivery that cleans and removes contamination leaving the part surface original and saves on soda usage while greatly improving cabinet visibility.
Our Blizzard Stage III Soda Blasting cabinet, and our other soda machines, uses Ghostflow® Soda Control and Used Soda Collection prevents 95% of the used abrasive from entering the dust collector.
To Sum It Up
Media Blast is an industry leader in part because we’ve been building high-quality abrasive blast cabinets for more than 44 years. We understand how to make machines that fit any blasting application, including soda blasting.
If you’re not sure if this is the right abrasive for you, check out our Soda Blasting Basics blog post, give us a call or visit our Buying Guide.