Leaky bead blasting cabinet

I just built one, and had the same problem. I caulked the snot out of the thing, and it helped a lot. I still have a few little leaks to patch, but I'm not getting that stuff all over the place any more.

For the vent, I'm planning on sticking a small vacuum cleaner bag over the pipe with a rubber band. I just duck-taped a shop rag over the end of my vent to get the cabinet running, and it works, but not very well. The vacuum cleaner bag should let the cabinet vent without leaking beads. If the bag fills up I can just empty it back into the cabinet.

Cheers, Walt

The blast cabinet needs to be maintained at negative pressure while in use. A dust collector should be attached to the vent (a ShopVac will work for a small cabinet, but the bag filter style dust collectors used by woodworkers would be better). Vent the vacuum cleaner

Gary

||On 1 Jun 2004 10:12:33 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com (Ronnie Lyons, Meridian, Idaho) wrote: ||>I recently acquired a bead blasting cabinet and like the idea, but not ||>the consequences. The first time I used it I discovered it leaked ||>glass beads all over the place, which I attributed to the lack of a ||>vent for the pressure to escape. When I used it, the inbound airflow ||>would collapse the gloves on my hands so I knew it was building up a ||>lot of internal pressure anf forcing beads out anywhere they could ||>come out. ||>

||>I attached a vent out the back, made of 1-1/2 PVC. It comes out, drops ||>down to the floor then turns vertical for about 7 feet, open at the ||>top. That helped a lot, but the vent still spews a fine mist of glass ||>beads in the exhaust air, which settles out all over the shop. ||>

||>I guess I'm a little stumped when it comes to the finer points of ||>blast cabinets. This thing leaks beads out of every screw hole, around ||>every attachment...if there's a hole or gap, she leaks. Even the edges ||>where the cabinet bolts together with a gasket, and the frame around ||>the window glass, they all leak. ||>

||>I'm considering tearing it completely apart and siliconing the hell ||>out of everything to keep the beads in, but the vent is still a ||>problem. What am I going to put on the end of the 1-1/2 PVC pipe to ||>let the air out and keep the bead dust in? Any points on venting this ||>beast? Thanks! || ||The blast cabinet needs to be maintained at negative pressure while ||in use. A dust collector should be attached to the vent (a ShopVac ||will work for a small cabinet, but the bag filter style dust collectors ||used by woodworkers would be better). Vent the vacuum cleaner ||*outdoors* so that the fine dust doesn't wind up everywhere inside ||your shop..

...or in your lungs. Slilica dust is a Bad Thing to inhale.

Texas Parts Guy

Is the source of the air for the blaster the cabinet itself or are you just using shop air? You need to keep the cabinet interior at a negative pressure and that means that you at the least need to pull the air out of the cabinet with a fan that has a filter on it.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

What Gary says is good advice to follow>

You can build a nice dust collector with two 30 gallon grease drums.

Place the first drum on floor, open side up. Cut an inlet hole in the side of the drum near the center, heightwise. Connect hose to cabinet. Take the second drum, cut a hole on the bottom. Install filter bag in opening in top, then invert over first drum and seal. Install vacuum blower or other suction to the hole now on top. Vent that to the outside. If you use a vacuum/blower arangement that sits ontop of the whole assembly, you can lift it off, teach through the hole and shake out the filter bag. On mine, I can hear a handfull of crud break loose and fall to the bottom. Its a good setup.

See ww grainger item 4KR11 for picture. They used to sell the bag for these things, my catalog (old 1999) does not have bag re-ordering info.

MM

For just a bead blast cabinet, even the cheapest shop vac works great, if you use a paper filter intended for drywall dust. Works better than any of the < $500 commercial bead/sand blast dust collectors. If you can dedicate a vac to it and put the vac outside, it'll be good for your health and your shop's. If you can keep the whole cabinet outside, even better.

They still do. Spendy, though. See the URL:

Lautard has a pic of a homemade unit in one of his Bedside Readers. It was meant to be hooked up to a Shopvac so that the stuff inside didn't make it outside. Not sure how long a Shopvac would run with silica dust and other stuff running through the motor, those filters don't catch it all. You'd probably want to vent the thing to the outside anyway. In the powdercoating biz, we had a cyclone separator to catch the fine stuff along with a bag house for final filtration. You could make a cyclone separator and one of those woodworking bag-type dust catchers might work for a final filter.

Stan

Stan

A centrifugal air cleaner canister like the ones on earth-moving equipment might help. The bigger stuff swirls out of the air and collects in the bottom of the canister where it can be drained off.

WJ

I bought a Cadillac separator of this type on ebay, have yet to hook it up. Any dust collector can be improved by a cyclone design.