sand blasters

[WildPlumDx]

looking at getting a sand blaster from super cheap, they have two types, gravity feed hopper one think its 60 bux and a tube feed suck the sand outta the bucket type, which ones better ?

[Truenotch]

It depends what sort of compressor you have and what the application is.

With a gravity fed / hopper type gun you need far less air flow. A medium sized direct drive compressor will deal with one of these.

The suction type ones need a lot more air to get the sand all the way up the tube... It has to be a free air delivery of at least 7cfm to have enough oomph to do a good job.

[WildPlumDx]

cool thanks yeah i only have a 2.5 air compressor, do have a 10hp 3 phase one but its out of action for time being, so you reakon the gravity feed type would be ok for 2.5 hp compressor ?

[Truenotch]

Have a check of the specs on the gravity type gun. The ampro one I have listed needs 7cfm to run propperly, and most 2.5hp compressors only run a MAX of about 8.4cfm and a Free air delivery of 3.5cfm or so....

[Dell'orto]

I did run the suction type sand blaster off my little 2hp direct drive compressor, but it was basically having to run continuously and wasnt able to do any great deal of work for a period of time.

Even my new compressor which is 3hp/50l tank with a solid 12cfm works hard to run it, though I was able to blast continuously for a long time.

[RUNAMUCK]

My old man bought a syphon type one, and we made up a bucket/hopper to feed it. Uses insane amounts of air. Plus you wind up with sand coming out of your eyes, ears, nose, and hair for days afterwards. It's such a cunt of a job, I haven't bothered to use it for years.