Thursday, 30 January 2014

Musings : grit blasting

With the blasting nearly complete I thought I would record some of the lessons I have learned.

I used a cheap Chinese pressure pot widely available on eBay and through tool warehouses:

This is the smaller of the two sizes available and is VERY heavy when full. The handles, wheels and frame are barely up to the job and it is difficult to move on any surface other than a smooth floor.

The grit is loaded through the screw cap in the top, a large funnel is needed. It is important to sieve the grit as it is added because if you get bits in the vessel they will be very difficult to get out.

Here are my funnel, ordinary kitchen sieve and an old dustpan for scooping up the grit.

The set comes with ceramic blasting nozzles that wear away very quickly.
As they wear the bore increases which uses more air and slows down the grit so performance starts to suffer almost straight away. The life of a nozzle with the grade B garnet that I was using at 100 psi was about 15 minutes. I used about 8 nozzles for the bare cab: about $120 worth.

So I bit the bullet and bought a professional quality tungsten carbide nozzle
This is a CT-2 nozzle from Clemco Industries. About $150 and after finishing the cab and all the panels it is showing no signs of wear. The -2 refers to the nozzle size in sixteenths of an inch, so this is a 1/8" nozzle and I think, the smallest they do. 

This single phase compressor will not keep a 1/8" nozzle supplied at anything over about 65psi continuous which was not really enough for the work I was doing which meant regular pauses to let the pressure build up.


If I doing a similar job again, a whole vehicle, I would consider hiring a towable diesel compressor and do it all in one weekend.

I built a simple tent out of wood and plastic; another piece of plastic covers the top and open side. This did a good job of containing the mess.


The grit is Grade-B garnet and it leaves a really nice key for the primer.







No comments:

Post a Comment