I have a front/top load suction media blasting cabinet. It's ok but if you've ever used a pressure fed commercial unit you'd be unsatisfied. I remembered I had saved a link to this 5 yr old post. https://forums.thehomefoundry.org/i...load-door-modification.1339/page-3#post-31230 He hasn't been here since but I made my own quick and dirty version of his mod. He claimed 4-5x performance improvement, and I must say, he was right. It's basically just adding a vibrator to the gravity fed hopper of the cabinet and then adding a pressurized air stream to assist in ejecting the sand up the hose instead of just relying on the ejector at the blasting nozzle. Then plumbing both to the downstream side of the pressure pedal. I just stuck the vibrator on with a magnet for now. I welded a couple of pieces of tube together and it slips onto the existing stub on the trap door. I have a needle valve on the vibrator and ejector nozzle, and there may be some optimization to be had, but the initial improvement was so great not sure I'll mess with it other than ditch the magnet and permanently mount the vibrator. The OE aspirator vent is crude. It's just a hole in the gravity feed tube stub in the trap door and the adjustment was how far you inserted the hose and covered the hole.......I put a hose clamp over it half open for now. This could be improved by routing a hose to a ball valve but considering I've been using it for years as it was and how much better it works now......not sure it's worth the effort......maybe later. I had all the parts on hand, and it is low dollar/effort and low air consumption mod compared to the air consumption of the blaster itself. It's quite the improvement and frankly, it's hard to believe the suction cabinet manufacturers don't use it considering the performance improvement. I noticed a little more dust for my vacuum to keep up with and I expect it will break down media faster but it also covers surface area much faster so that increased speed is a big win as far as I'm concerned. Best, Kelly
Interesting idea. I upgraded my Princess Auto (Canadian version of Harbor Freight) floor model blast cabinet with a better gun, mixer and foot pedal some years ago. It was a huge improvement and had it working about as well as the commercial Mod U Blast unit my old work had..not really surprising as the upgrade bits were functionally identical. Now I have to try this... add one more project to the list I guess lol. Regards, Al
The needle valves are wide open on mine. If air usage isn't an issue, you may not need them. You could probably use an electric vibrator but it is convenient to just have it powered/controlled from the pneumatic circuit. Best, Kelly
Air has not been an issue, easy enough to try it first and add needle valves if needed. Not sure how you have dust collection setup to your vacuum, I'm still using a larger shop vac with a dust bag, but the air runs through a Dust Deputy centrifugal separator first...makes the bags last a long time. Al
