Going back to a few earlier posts (even as far back as post #15), we've had discussions about sand-blast cabinets and related subjects. This is another such post.
Wet blasting ("vapor", "honing", "dustless", whatever you wish to call it) has been around a long time and has its benefits for some applications. I've been noticing a number of "DIY" conversions of dry blasting cabinets into wet blasting....yet another of the countless "upgrades" to the HF blast cabinet. So I wasted a couple hours looking at numerous sites discussing this conversion. I don't know if I'd be too interested in building a wet blasting cabinet, but in the process of reading about them I stumbled onto a couple interesting ideas.
The first one can be used for either wet or dry blasting by changing the settings. It is a 3D printed blasting gun that is modeled on the better industrial gun designs. With 3D printing it should be easy and affordable to make. This guy has developed the print file to do it. Here's a link for more info:
I'd be curious to hear from experienced 3D print people if this seems like a viable item to print.
I also saw where a guy converted his blast cabinet to be capable of doing multiple operations, including wet blasting, parts hot washing, and cold rinsing. But the interesting part was how he designed it so the hot washer shares the same gun as the wet blaster, therefore it has air pressure forcing the hot degreaser solution at the parts. Basically combining a degreaser washer, a hot tank process, and a blast function all at the same time. And the results were impressive. We know heating a cleaning solution adds energy to the reaction to make it work better. And we know adding forced air to create a "pressure washer" effect also works better. Now do both - heat it and force spray it. There are commercial hot pressure washer machines available but they are crazy expensive. This guy's DIY cabinet was kind of a scaled down version that could be made relatively affordably.
Another related video I saw was a engine machine shop comparing the various cleaning processes they have available. That included a hot tank, a "dish washer" type cleaner, a bake oven, a tumbler shot-peening machine, and wet blasting with glass beads. The choice of what to use partly depends if the parts are aluminum or iron. But in most cases it is a combination of at least two or three processes. Typically it starts with baking to cook the heavy crud. Followed by wet blasting to remove the residue. Then a session in the dishwasher to clean out the glass; one washer has a caustic solution for iron and the other has a aqueous solution for aluminum. And in some cases a run through the tumbler. The interesting comment was how wet blasting was the most effective at removing not only carbon buildup but also the scale in coolant passages. However a while back we had a discussion about how to clean out coolant passages and it was found that blasting was limited to only the areas easily accessible by the blast gun, which is basically the little bit that you can see with a direct line of sight. I've also heard that those dishwasher cleaning machines won't remove all of the particles left by blasting. So I'm not sure I fully agree with those guys.
www.harborfreight.com
