Tuesday, August 3, 2021

finished blast cabinet

 some pics of the upgrades...

on the left: Old 'n Busted (comes with the cabinet) these do not flow very much air due to a small, and completely fixed (it's a casting) orifice size. Air flow determines abrasive speed and deposition rate.

on the right: The New Hotness (clone of Cleco gun)
The Cleco-pattern cabinet gun has no valve, as it is intended to be used with a full-flow foot pedal.  The air flow is determined by the size of orifice (the black part) installed.  When the orifice is changed, the nozzle up front must also be changed, and the orifice gap should be re-adjusted for maximum vacuum on the media suction hose.

 

 This shows the custom LED light I installed inside the cabinet.  This was made by a guy who was doing the same kind of upgrades, and to get the price down for the components, he bought several of everything and sold the spares on eBay.  I bought one for $40.  It's about seventeen times brighter than the ridiculous fluorescent PoS that comes with the cabinet.  You can just throw that away, it wasn't good for anything I could think of.

NOTE: the hole visible at the other end of the cabinet leads to the dust collector, and at some point it should get a baffle installed over it to reduce the amount of still-useful grit the dust collector sucks up.

 To make it more convenient for the operator, I mounted the regulator and gauge right on and in the cabinet, rather than at the air supply point on the wall.

 Placing the gauge so that it was was easy to read meant that it was also hanging out in the breeze where it's quite likely to get whacked by a passing piece of steel on its way into or out of the cabinet, so I made a steel gauge protector.

 The aluminum block it's mounted on is a now-standard air dispense point that comes with those plastic tubing compressed air kits.

 This shows the placement of the regulator and the hoses which lead down to the foot pedal and media metering valve.

 I put casters on the cabinet feet because EVERYTHING in my shop is on wheels by policy.  I just find it makes my life easier on a regular basis.  I have been considering putting an extra wooden shelf at the bottom on top of the casters and inside the legs, but that would also interfere with bucket placement to drain media from the media sump.  I could make a cutout in the middle for the small buckets I use... we'll see.  Storage space is scarce in my shop, so it'll probably happen eventually.  I could keep several 25# buckets of different blast media on that shelf.

 I wrote "Zeno's Air-A-Box" across the cabinet in magic marker one day, I was so frustrated at how slowly progress was going.  The further I got into it, the slower it seemed to go.  You can read about Zeno's Paradox here.

 The next task is to finish obtaining all the water- and oil-removal equipment for the new air compressor, run the new 240V 30A circuit which it requires, and get it all hooked up so I can use this thing!




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