Tuesday 21 February 2017

Soda Blast Failure

If you've read the last couple of posts you'll know about my trial with building a soda blaster, well it really is turning into a trial!

Yesterday I tied to use my DIY setup but the pipes in the hardware seemed to just constantly clog up so I'd strip down to see if I could find the issue but the soda would just fall back out the wrong way. I gave up.




Today I started with a fresh mind and thought about using a wider hose but the only thing I had available was hose pipe. I cut A 3 foot length and jammed a large funnel in one end as a make shift hopper. I drilled a 6mm hole about 2" away from the opposite end and jammed the nozzle from my compressor blower into it. This worked to a certain extent but the soda was coming through way too fast so I tried altering the funnels nozzle diameter to reduce the flow. It didn't really work. so back to square one with that. The hose has about a 12mm diameter which I think is far to wide and any soda that comes through just lacks the necessary force to clean the paint from the aluminium engine case.




Tomorrow with a fresh mind again I'm going to try reducing the hose nozzle size to see if that helps. I have ordered a proper blaster tool that fits onto the compressor hose and has a feed for the soda but it could be a few days before that gets delivered and I'M IMPATIENT.

I had a small amount of success with this machine and it did clean a small area but I used about 2kg of soda and it took a loooong time so not viable.


The bare aluminium is the blasted area so it's working but not as efficiently as required by a long shot. 

The bearing puller arrived and although cheap at £26, it looks like a decent enough piece of hardware for the jobs I'll need it for. Here is the link for the one I bought.


Each day brings new challenges and sometimes they kick your arse. Today my arse got kicked but tomorrow I'll get up and try again.



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