hey man.. no braggin!.. that compressor is THE machine.. I sized my compressor wiring in case I should be lucky enough to come up with one.. missed one last summer from a closing shop for $500 by about 15 minutes.

sam

 

I picked up a really nice Quincy QR25 monster 5hp 240 volt, 22 amps 240 running close to 100 startup amps. Running a TIP sandblaster it stays around 75-80 psi. Compressor is huge, some 600 plus pounds, motor weighs 110 pounds. Its definately not a magic 5hp like the portable 110v compressors. Mine came from a screen printing shop that upgraded to two screw compressors.

 

Sam,
I made do for years with cobbled up setups. For about 20 years I had 3 and 4 hp sears tied together and mounted on top of a free 80 gallon horizontal air tank. One of the original small sears tanks rusted through so I dropped that compressor pump and motor down and direct mounted it to the pad on top of the 80 gallon tank. One day when I was running a die grinder (cutting out the cab floor on Willard) it seemed like I had to wait too long to build pressure back up. I went out into the outer shop and saw a compressor belt on the floor. I thought no problem one of the units just through a belt. I went to reinstall the belt and noticed that the large compressor pulley was missing. I thought, well still no problem. Then I noticed that the crankshaft had sheared off with a stub end still in the compressor pulley. That was the aha moment that I said to myself, now I am finally going to get a good compressor. That resulted in the 7 1/2 hp 2 stage IR.

 

Pay attention to your compressor's duty cycle. I didn't and it wasn't very long before I was replacing a head gasket on a fairly new compressor.

As for using silica sand as a media, especially outdoors, you have to be concerned with the health of everyone down wind as well as yourself. I use aluminum oxide in my cabinet blaster and have a portable soda blaster that I plan to use when it is time for doing sheet metal.
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Rick

 

I bow to you..

can u run the air hose to my house/shop?

Sam

 

Sam,
The pressure drop from Maine to Texas might be a bit too much!

 

Nobody mentioned it but I buy the Black Beauty media at Menards. Its black anyway...? like 8 bucks/ 50 lb bag I think thats the price...

 

It'd be worth trying!

 

man.. such excuses.. I'd PAY you for the Maine air displaced..

oh well.. I'll just have to keep looking for a closer solution!.
again I bow to you

Sam

 

Thanks guys this is a great thread, too bad I needed it last summer when I had the truck tore apart and was using mine on the frame. Boy that was a PITA only being able to blast for a few minutes at a time. I have the HF sand blaster and was having the same issue with it. Now I will try it again when it comes time to start prepping the body for paint. Yay something positive for me today...

 

Thank you guys for posting this thread! I know it's an old thread but I'm glad it was here and I found it because it just saved me!

I had the same issues and was about to totally give up on it, but following the advice here got it working!
I also found another tip on a different forum - It talked about the short pipe below the sand valve on the bottom of the tank. It's screwed far into the manifold cutting off the flow. If you take off the big black hose that leads to your nozzle and look down in the manifold you will see that pipe (nipple). The tip is to drill it out so as to open the passage up.

I did this and the other tips in this thread and got it blasting.
Thanks guys for posting to this thread! - it saved me!

Here's the link to the other tip I was talking about:
H1FORUM.COM :: View topic - Harbor Freight sandblaster vs Texas Blaster

"after the close nipples are installed firmly on the manifold - maybe even installed on the bottom of the tank - although I didn't do mine in this way - run successively larger drill bits down the manifold from the nipple where the heavy black blasting hose attaches at the bottom of the tank. The problem here is that the close nipple from the bottom of the tank to the center of the manifold sticks way into the manifold - it cuts off the passage by at least 50% which causes a ton of jams. Start with a bit that fits inside the end nipple (again the one where the black hose attaches). After you've cut off the protruding end of the center nipple (protruding on the inside of the unit) then move up 3 or 4 drill sizes (I use a standard drill index) to open up the ID if the end nipple. Go slow through all of this because the drill bit wants to catch the ragged end of the middle close nipple - I broke a bit in this process, but got it out easily. Again, this is the MOST IMPORTANT modification."

 

These guys are right must have absolute dry media and air supply as well as adequate air supply. I cant really help with your set up because I sandblast and powder coat for a living. So needless to say my John Deere diesel 185cfm air compressor and 6.0 cubic foot (500lb media capacity hopper) set up is much bigger than yours and ive never actually used a that particular unit. but in theory they mostly work the same except some are pressure fed where as mine is gravity fed. I still only have my sand valve opened less than half way. A lot of people think you need all this sand or other media to blast the clean everything off and with rust a lot of times thats the case, but with paint or other coatings the sand is actually used to break the coating down and the air pressure from the compressor is whats doing the work to actually lift the coating off and remove it.

 

I've been eyeballing the dustless DB150 as of late. Very expensive! But in my neck of the woods, nobody else is doing it, and it could be a business opportunity.