Wet Blasters: Industrial Vapor Blast Cabinets vs. Light Duty Wet Blasters

At Media Blast & Abrasives we make both kinds of vapor blast cabinets: Industrial and Light Duty. Industrial cabinets are designed to operate on a production capacity daily duty cycle (DDC). This means the machines are able to run longer intervals between maintenance and process more parts in a shorter time frame. Light Duty wet sandblast cabinets are built to operate in shorter durations and process smaller batches of parts.

3 Benefits of Industrial Vapor Blast Cabinets

Wet blasters, also called Vapor Blasting Cabinets are 5 to 6 times slower than Dry Blasting Cabinets. This is why many users turn to Industrial grade machines when cleaning speed is important. Unfortunately, many manufacturers aren’t transparent about cleaning speed and focus primarily on machine cost.

Our Industrial Model, the Hurricane Line, offers three great features:

1. An easily serviced external 2 hp slurry abrasive pump that’s capable of high abrasive suspension using fast volume recycle, up to 23%.
2. Operates with larger abrasive sizes than Light Duty Models, and uses a larger gun CFM size to offer faster part processing.
3. Built for all abrasive types, even Silicon Carbide and other cutting abrasives.

3 Benefits of Light Duty Wet Blast Cabinets

Light Duty Wet, or Light Duty Vapor Blasting Cabinets can be a great tool when used properly. Here are three great features of our HydroSlurry models:

1. The air compressors for our Light Duty models use Single-Phase Electrical Power Panels, which are typically found in small shops and homes.
2. Use a Submersible Pump inside the cabinet to operate with the finer 25-to-50-micron abrasive used to seal and polish the part surface with minimum part surface removal. A 15% abrasive suspension is about the most you find with Light Duty Vapor Blast Cabinets.
3. Ideal for hand-held parts.

ProTip: Always look at the CFM at 100 psi! For Light Duty machines, CFM will likely be 20 to 22 CFM maximum even if it lists a 9 hp motor. This is because it is using only the amperage of a typical 5 hp 220-volt single phase motor. For more information about compressed air, visit our previous blog post: Air Compressor 101: Everything You Need to Know.

To Sum It Up

The two kinds of Vapor Blast Cabinets have completely different applications, different machine costs, different cleaning speeds, and Daily Duty Cycles. Many people are buying “User Applications Short” when searching and buying Wet Blasting Cabinets. This means they buy Light Duty Vapor Blast Cabinets with lower costs based on simple math. Unfortunately, that might not be the best fit machine.

Media Blast has been manufacturing both Wet and Dry Blasting Cabinets for Almost Half-Century right here in the USA. We offer both Industrial and Light Duty Vapor Blast Cabinets and we want to help you buy the right machine the first time. Contact us today!

Fun Fact: Media Blast® and MediaBlasters® of Media Blast & Abrasives, Inc.