Shop vac ok for sand-blaster dust collection?

A shop vac is not the way to go. Shop vacs pull filtred air accross the motor to cool it and the motor's bearings. Add a bit of grit to that airflow and you will have a destroyed motor in short order. Regardless of what the vacs manufacturer offers as their best filter element, it will not be fine enough to filter the dust out. After destroying several shop vacs, I replaced the motor with what is called a "by-pass" blower. With this type of blower, the airflow does not pass the motor, so the grit does not damage anything. I used to by my motors from Grainger.com.

I was using a shop vac while using aluminum oxide media, it died a horrid death. I know a guy who uses glass bead and his is still working fine. Probably not the best tool, but alot of people use them. It depends on what you're blasting with, eventually the motor will get gacked up. Good luck!

walt

Clark, Give serious thought to installing a simple squirrel cage blower that exhausts directly outside instead of using a vacuum to keep the cabinet clean. If you have neighbors close by, it may not be a good idea, but I've done it for years with outstanding results. Something quite small, perhaps around 100 CFM, is more than adequate. I had a vacuum that came with my cabinet but hated the damned thing. They tend to plug up quite quickly when you're running fine media.

If you decide to go with the blower, make sure it isn't too large so it doesn't pull good media out of your cabinet.

Harold

A shop vac will need special filtering to remove the really fine dust. You can get them (Fein for example), but the cost goes up.

I like Harold's idea of dumping it outside. Abrasive dust can be pretty bad stuff to breath.

Steve

Clark Magnus> This is a Champion C90200 from Shcuck's auto parts.