As promised here are the pictures of the parts, especially the Aluminum parts after being blasted with Soda Blast, the parts are almost smooth, unlike blasting with Black Blast, which leaves the surface with a textured finish. You can see all of the original grinding marks that resulted in smoothing the casting marks and the color swirl from the casting process, Soda doesn't obliterate these surface marks.
It took almost a whole 50 pound bag to shoot all of these parts, half a bag of Black Blast to clean up the rusted steel parts.
You can see how smooth the aluminum is after soda blasting, which is more like cleaning than blasting.
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Here you can see where the worker ground off the casting flaw above the on off switch, sand blasting would have covered this up
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Here you can see the difference between aluminum and cast iron that has been soda blasted, the cast iron comes out looking like a raw casting, rather than a sand blasted part.
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Outstanding process! I Googled it a night or two ago, and learned that soda blasting was originally developed for the Statue of Liberty restoration, to avoid damaging the copper cladding. There's a small company near me that does it as a service, so I hope to give it a try on my next restoration project.
I have gotten a couple of "soda" blaster items from HF. Not so happy with either one and in fact I don't see them listed any more. They were for small areas and had a very limited amount of media which turned out to be there down fall.
These larger units, both the 15 and the 40 pounders look like a much better way to go if your compress can handle the air requirements. 8.5 CFM @ 90 PSI for the large one and 7 CFM @ 90 PSI for the smaller. My compressor will not deliver that output. And that is why I went with smaller units...... yes my own fault.
What I have been doing is going up to my brothers and using his system. Not something I love doing as that "sand" gets everywhere. You end up looking like a deep sea diver and it still finds its way in somewhere. He use to have a booth set up and that is nice but you are limited by the size as to what fits.
When you first start off you are so impressed at how the paint and rust comes off without much effort but later on it's more like what did I get myself into.
Ed
{Knight of the Shopsmith} [Hero's don't wear capes, they wear dog tags]
My blaster, a "San Blaster" came from Eastwood an auto restoration supplier has changeable nozzels, I used the 3/32" hole size for soda blasting,cuts down on CFM used and conserves media, my air compressor puts out 19 CFM at 100 PSI so I have plenty of capacity. The interchangeable tips are the key, I use 1/8" for Black Blast.It took me over an hour to do all these parts, plus cleaning the blaster out to change from Black Blast to Soda, must vacuum out Black Blast before using Soda.
Thanks for the heads up! Guess I will be doing a little more looking before making the purchase.
My air system delivers 11.4 cfm @ 90psi. I have a double filtration set-up(with desiccant media) on it for running my plasma cutter so it produces absolute dry, oil free air.
Your last line is one of the reasons I haven't purchased one yet. I wanted to see how others evaluate the process and what to expect with the end result.
Just for reference my compressor produces a whopping 5.6 at 90 psi. It is also from 1988 so who knows what the output is now that it is 28 years later. Maybe I should put a new one on my list???????
Ed
{Knight of the Shopsmith} [Hero's don't wear capes, they wear dog tags]
reible wrote:Just for reference my compressor produces a whopping 5.6 at 90 psi. It is also from 1988 so who knows what the output is now that it is 28 years later. Maybe I should put a new one on my list???????
Ed
Yup when it was new you could have gotten by, but I am sure with wear on the rings, etc. You are probabily way below that now. I found my new pump on line at a VERY reasonable price and it is all cast iron, the old Craftsman French built pump was aluminum, and parts were no longer available, it needed gaskets and reed valves. Check on line, if you want I can look for whom I bought it from.
