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I have been thinking for a couple years about building my own blast cabinet with a kit from TP tools;
http://www.tptools.com/p/335,142_Build- ... ystem.html
I had talked to a guy locally who knew a guy that built one and no longer uses it. I was told the guy wanted to sell it for $100. The problem is that it is at the front of a storage trailer with dozens of engine blocks in the way. I have been waiting for probably 2 years but the guy isn't in any hurry to get it dug out. So I have pretty much given up on that deal.

So I had pretty much decided to build my own. TP tools always has a booth at The Carlisle shows and I usually go in the fall. I figured this coming fall I would get the kit there and save the shipping. They charge an extra $35.00 shipping charge on top of the normal shipping.


Over this past weekend a co-worker went to Grizzly Industrial and brought me back a new catalog. I was looking though it today and came across this;
http://www.grizzly.com/products/24-inch ... inet/G0708
It seems like a really good price for the size and I can easliy drive there and pick it up. I'm sure it isn't as well made as the TP cabinets are and it is made in china.

I'm looking for thoughts and opinions on my different options. I have plenty of time to decide (I have gone all these years without anything).

Todd,you are a really smart fella and pretty handy too .Why not have some pieces of sheetmetal sheared and build your own?
You could even make one from a fueloil barrel or a 55 gallon drum,heck I have seen pics of them made out of OSB.The big thing is it needs ventilation.Mine has a "dust bag" but fills the shop with dust in no time.I am trying to come up with a way to vent it directly outside without have to chop holes in the wall.

I built one prob 10+ yrs ago from a kit at TP tools... made it mostly from 3/4 plywood i beleive 2 sheets is required and i made the legs from some angle iron i had kickin around.....its stood up fairly well but over the years i have added 3 lights vs the single, sheetmetal on both side walls and the back... i covered the worktop support 2x4's with sheetmetal (the wood was slowly getting eaten away) I have added a Vac.... which is mandatory and dont get one from home depot they dont last a week. The air output of the vac NEEDS to be routed outside... this keeps dust out and it makes the shop alot quieter. I also added an intake filter to the cabinet this keep the dust from getting into the shop if you shoot in that general direction.
Now my father took it one step further at his house and routed the air intake from the outside.... this helps the noise thing but also keeps from sucking the heat out of the shop and sending it outside... IE so outside air in and pump the same air though the vac and outside.....hey whats a few more holes in the wall!

Anyhow looking back i might have just bought the whole shebang and been done with it.... of course when i built it i thought i wouldnt use it much.... and this cabinet has done aprox 5 or 6 cubs plus 2 F-cubs plus a W-6 a W-4 and tons of misc engines etc.... its soooooo nice to walk over and blast something in 2 min clean it quick and prime and painted in less then an hour....

Thinking as i write this i think i should write something for the tools section.... cause in 10 yrs i have experienced everything with this cabinet..... well im in aspen and i got some time ......

I took alook at the grizzley cabinet... the cabinet itself is kinda hard to screw-up even the china people can make it fairly good... i would be a bit worried about the filter and motor they prob wont hold up long. That style filter like in a wet-vac wont last long at all (like i said before i burned up a shop-vac in short order) You will be cleaning the filter prob once a day or better! The Tp vac uses a bag in the bottom with a weight that gets sucked "up" when running and "drops" when off and when it drops the dust falls to the bottom of the pail. The maintenance interval is way less prob like 2 twice a year for how much we use it. I have replaced the bag once and the motor once in 5 or so years.... prob if i replaced the bag more often the motor woule have lasted longer...
One thing u learn quick with blasting is that everything is a maintenance item! Gloves, tips, blubs, glass protector, sand, hose, glass, filter motor, vavles! all i have replaced at least once, some often. Which was one thing that i would watch with the grizzley be sure they offer EVERY part on that cabinet separately! I also didnt see any peal-off glass protectors. IF u dont use these and replace them often u wont see anything after a few days!
I looked at TP for a similair cabinet.... its around 1200.00 which i think is the one my father just bought... free ship in zone one. so its about 450 more then grizzley... know the vac by itself is like 230 i think I guess im a bit partial to TP

This may be a little late, But if you have a harbor freight store near you, its possible to pick up one of thier cabinets on sale for a reasonable price with the extended service warranty and trade it in every 20 months prior to the warranty running out. Yes, I understand they are made in China and are not for professional every day use, but I have one, its built well and has served has not failed me since I got it for Christmas in 2010.

I love TP tools and always visit thier tent at Fall Carlisle, but cant open my wallet for that grade of tools and still have funds for my projects.

I saw a nice pic on another site of a sand blast cabinet made from an old 275 gallon oil tank , the tank it self is a nice starting point there are already 2 inch pipe threaded openings in the top perfect for the vacuum and the light, also the bottom of the tank is the right shape for the blast material and the side of the tank is were the door goes lots of room for big items and the tank already has threads for legs ,,,,,, if I ever get around to it I plan to build one....

Well, back in May I was all set to drive to Grizzly and pick up their cabinet. But I figured I'd better check to make sure they were in stock so I sent them an email. They replied and said they are in stock and they needed my contact info to hold one for me. Sounds great so I sent them back an email with that info within 1/2 hour. An hour later they email me back saying they are out of stock and won't have any till August. WTH!!

So I decide to wait till Aug. About the second week of Aug I sent them another email. They replied that they would have them
by the 25th. On the 28th I still hadn't heard from them so I sent another email. This time they pushed the date back to Sept 25. By this time I started to feel like I was getting the run-around and am sick of waiting. My Dad and I are buying it together so I talked it over with him. Unfortunately for them, all this screwing around gave me time to read a bunch of forums and do more research on them. I have heard nothing but good things about the TP cabinets and their guns and siphon system and their vacuum. Theirs is about $300 more than the Grizzly but it comes with some extras and it is made in the USA.
Since Fall Carlisle is coming up next weekend we decided to go with a TP Tools unit instead.
Here is the unit we decided to go with;
http://www.tptools.com/p/2709,54_960-T- ... binet.html
It has a trigger gun but we can later upgrade to the foot pedal if we don't like the trigger.
They knock $100 off the price at the show and we were planning on going there anyway.

Good choice todd!

They really make nice stuff you will be happy.

I would highly recommend routing the air intake and vacumm ehaust to the outside.... air quality is the utmost of importance... pretty sure my father used dryer vents in both cases. i know they sell kits that will get you partway.

dave

Todd,I think you will find Grizzly did you a favor.I think you will also find a foot pedal will be great upgrade when you add one.My cabinet has a hand control and my hand cramps if I blast for a while.

I got the cabinet all set up and have gotten to use it a little. No major projects but just enough to get a feel for how it works. Overall I'm pretty pleased with it. With the standard nozzle my compressor runs all the time. I got some smaller nozzles but haven't tried them yet. The Skat majic media seems to work pretty good. I also picked up some black diamond at TSC but haven't tried it yet. I added second floodlight to it. I hooked it up with an Aqua-chek filter which should keep the moisture out.

I was thinking about making a homemade compressor out of an old 6cyl. motor i have laying around. I have seen where guys have use the trannys for different gearing.I thought about usinf a cub to power it, but I'd like to have electric just to make it easier to use. The only reason I've been thinking about this is because when I do blast the compressor runs non stop.

Farmallgray wrote:I got the cabinet all set up and have gotten to use it a little. No major projects but just enough to get a feel for how it works. Overall I'm pretty pleased with it. With the standard nozzle my compressor runs all the time. I got some smaller nozzles but haven't tried them yet. The Skat majic media seems to work pretty good. I also picked up some black diamond at TSC but haven't tried it yet. I added second floodlight to it. I hooked it up with an Aqua-chek filter which should keep the moisture out.

Any more thoughts since you have used this cabinet for awhile Todd? I have the older version of your cabinet and there have been a bunch of yellow and red parts pass through it over the last few years. I have used their gold (small) 4-8 cfm jets in mine with good results on the small parts although it seems to run better with the standard medium jets. I am running an older 60gal upright Speedaire compressor and have noticed that once the medium jets get close to the end of their life the air consumption really goes up.
Chad

I didn't think I had used it very much but I wore out the original nozzle already. I tried the black stuff from TSC with both nozzles. It doesn't seem as agressive as I had hoped. It took a long time to remove paint. I left it in and changed to the smaller nozzles and it doesn't flow through them very well. The small nozzle seems to work ok with the Scat Majic abrasive. Even though the compressor runs all the time, it seems to take less time with the larger nozzle.

Farmallgray wrote:I didn't think I had used it very much but I wore out the original nozzle already. I tried the black stuff from TSC with both nozzles. It doesn't seem as agressive as I had hoped. It took a long time to remove paint. I left it in and changed to the smaller nozzles and it doesn't flow through them very well. The small nozzle seems to work ok with the Scat Majic abrasive. Even though the compressor runs all the time, it seems to take less time with the larger nozzle.

Good deal - I have been running that Skat Magic (sp?) in mine too and have found that it leaves a nice finish that paint seems to stick well to. The black stuff from TSC does seem to work well in my HF pressure pot when I have used it outside - not near as dusty (and silica laden) as regular blasting sand.
Chad

Although I dont have a big cabinet like youra, I use a product called STARBLAST in mine. It works pretty good. I encountered problems removing paint with it (later realized that it was the gun and not the abrasive) and tried the "Black Beauty" Coal Slag but it was really too coarse for my use. Didnt work real well in my little cabinet.

Where I work, we use glass beads. Seems to do a great job and from what I see, is not real hard on tips.

I tried The black stuff from TSC once and had trouble with it clogging the gun and I had a large nozzle on it.

TSC carries two different grits of the Black Diamond. I think the coarser is 30-60 grit. I tried it a few years ago with my small pressure blaster. It has small "sticks" that like to block the openings in the blaster. I got the finer 40-80 grit to try in the cabinet. I ran it through a sifter and it didn't seem to have these sticks.

I'm glad this chat started back up as i recently picked up a red pressure pot (holds about 50 lbs),it only came with one size tip and i'm not sure of the size? I am interested to know what kind of CFM's do you guys have to run your blasters.I have a craftsman oil compressor that put out about 7 CFM @90 and i'm thinking of getting another one to piggy back that when i'm blasting. Thanks Dave

dag1450 wrote:I'm glad this chat started back up as i recently picked up a red pressure pot (holds about 50 lbs),it only came with one size tip and i'm not sure of the size? I am interested to know what kind of CFM's do you guys have to run your blasters.I have a craftsman oil compressor that put out about 7 CFM @90 and i'm thinking of getting another one to piggy back that when i'm blasting. Thanks Dave

You might find a used larger upright tank and set it near the blast cabinet or Pot and it will let you blast longer.

wdeturck wrote:

dag1450 wrote:I'm glad this chat started back up as i recently picked up a red pressure pot (holds about 50 lbs),it only came with one size tip and i'm not sure of the size? I am interested to know what kind of CFM's do you guys have to run your blasters.I have a craftsman oil compressor that put out about 7 CFM @90 and i'm thinking of getting another one to piggy back that when i'm blasting. Thanks Dave

You might find a used larger upright tank and set it near the blast cabinet or Pot and it will let you blast longer.

That's exactly what I ended up doing with mine. I am guessing that my pot is pulling about 10CFM which is right at what my garage compressor can support. I found a horizontal tank off of a tire service truck and made some simple skids for it. It is probably 30 gallons and keeps the compressor from struggling to keep up and even will allow it to cycle when I stop to adjust parts (or take a water break). I added a water separator on the outlet and have found that I can knock more moisture out of the air too - which is helpful on humid NC days.

I can post pics if it will help anyone.