building a sandblast cabinet

So i was checking out the tech about building a blast cabinet from a 55 gallon drum. Its a great tech, BUT i was wondering, What would be the downfall of building a cabinet out of plywood?

 

I think a lot of people build them out of plywood. The only thing bad about plywood is that it warps and falls apart if you have to leave it outdoors a lot. But if you have an indoors place to keep it, plywood works fine. In the hopper part, it needs to be very smooth so that the sand falls down to the bottom of the hopper instead of heaping up in clumps, so the roughness of plywood might be a drawback there.

I made a big cabinet out of steel, mostly 18 gauge sheetmetal and a lot of 1-1/2 square thin wall tubing and 1/8" angle iron, and made the grating out of expanded metal over a frame of 1/8" bar stock standing on edge with a few reinforcement bars going across the middle. I bought a kit from TP Tools that included a window and window frame, some glove rings, gloves, a pickup tube, a foot pedal, the gun, and the hose that goes to the gun. It also came with some generalized plans that help you to design your own cabinet. I made mine big enough to fit doors, rear end housings, seat frames, etc. inside. I installed four glove rings and paid a few bucks extra to get an extra wide window instead of their standard one when I got the stuff from TP Tools. My cabinet is too big to fit in the garage though, so I have to leave it outdoors in the driveway with a tarp over it. Ugly! I put the whole thing on wheels so I could roll it around. I bought two sock type filters from TP Tools and bought a replacement vacuum cleaner motor from Grainger and made my own dust collector that hooks up to the blast cabinet using a 3" shop vac type plastic hose. For the fresh air inlet on the cabinet, I used an air cleaner from a small car.

Here's a picture of the inside of it.

 

Cool, i was thinking the bottom part for the sand to slide down would be made from steal. and just the main body of the cabinet from plywood. Also good idea on the vacume motor, ill have to give that some thought.

 

I have a wooden one. Built it almost 20 years ago, and it still works fine. But it has been inside all these years.

Eric

 

The vacuum motor sits on top of a tall skinny metal box. It pulls the dusty air up through the two sock filters which are held upright by two springs. The 3" air hose from the cabinet goes into a little box on the bottom of the filter cabinet. All the dust winds up in that box in the bottom. I've used the same filters for about five years now, still no holes. I just shake the filter cabinet around and the dust falls out of the socks and settles down into the box in the bottom.

For a small cabinet, I guess a lot of people just use a shop vac to suck the dust out, but that abrasive dust probably winds up ruining your shop vac's motor eventually. Maybe a wet/dry shop vac with some water in it would do a better job of holding down the dust. The dust is terrible for your lungs, so do whatever you can to avoid breathing any dust.

I've been using mostly "Australian Garnet" lately. It cuts through rust and paint really fast. For aluminum, glass beads are better.

 

RustyBolts, do you have any pictures of your entire cabinet so we can see the way you have it set up?

 

YA, what he^^^^^ said? i was going to ask the same thing.

 

I don't have any other pics of it, but I'll try to take some pics of it sometime soon and post them.

 

I built mine out of an old washing machine cabinet.The bottom of the washer was cone shaped upward to hold the drum in the center,so I turned it over and it became a funnel.Then i welded leggs on each corner just so a 5 gallon pail would sit benneath it.The back was originally was perferated,I replaced that with plywood with 2 arm holes with blue jean leggs attachted to heavy rubber gloves.Then a light and small plastic window and a cheap siphon gun.It work pretty good.

 

There was an article in Street Rodder ,March 1998, on how to build one yourself out of plywood. Here's a link to the kit they used, lots of stuff in the sight.

http://www.tptools.com/prod_list_di...nets&mscssid=23CRSGE16UT98L6T09LTKCQ2582QB358

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I hate sandblasting..

I'd rather watch paint dry.. (and I detest painting of any sort)

that said.. I did have a sandblast cabinet made out of a PLASTIC 55 gallon drum mounted sideways..

I used a holesaw to cut holes for the gloves, cut a window out with a jigsaw, and created a door on the one end..

I used it for awhile and realized that "i hated sandblasting"
and pitched it.

i might have had 20 bucks in it..

if you do some searching I believe there were plans somewhere on line

 

I built one from the tub of a dishwasher.

 

So i was also wondering, I will be using my 20 gallon portable presureized sandblaster. How well will it work in a cabinet compaired to a cabinet that is self contained?

 

Okay, I took a few pics of my big ugly home-made cabinet. As you can see the silver "Hammerite" rust preventative paint doesn't hold up worth a crap outdoors (it's rusting right through the paint just about everywhere). The window, gun, gloves, glove rings, and foot pedal came from T.P. Tools. I used to have one of their pickup tubes in it, but I made a new one out of stainless steel that works better. I made hinged doors at both ends of the cabinet. The doors are tube steel frames with sheetmetal over them. I put slanted panels inside the doors because sand kept piling up on the inside ledge of the doors. The hopper works okay usually, but sometimes I have to stop and bang on it to get the mounds of sand to fall down into the middle. I probably should have made the hopper a little deeper. I made it so that the door on the bottom of the hopper is high enough to clear a 5 gallon bucket. There are two 75 watt flood lamps inside. When I flick the switch on, the lamps and the vacuum dust filter come on and I'm ready to blast. I welded some big hooks on the bottom to hang all the hoses and crap on when I'm done using it.

I made that filter box thing from scratch. It uses two large sock type filters that I got from T.P. Tools. On top is a large vacuum cleaner motor inside a muffled housing to keep it quiet. The dust collects in the bin on the bottom, which is removable. When I'm not using this thing, I stick that big filter thing and the hose inside the cabinet. I have to put a tarp over it when it rains. I'm thinking about making some kind of a metal cover for it to make it more weatherproof.

It was kind of fun building this thing, and I've used it a lot over the past 6 years or so. I think I have about $300 total into it. It's comparable to big commercial ones that are more like $2500, so it was worth the effort I think.