I just purchased a pressure feed 10 gal pot. This thing is awsome, much faster than my old siphon blaster. While testing it out I noticed one fault, this thing creats a lot of static electricity. I felt what at first I thought was sand stinging my hand , but then noticed sparks jumping from the nozzle to my hand . Anybody ever had this problem. Do I put a ground wire on it or use heavier gloves?
Thank, Jeff

 

I'd like to know the answer too,
This happend to me and freaked me out a little , then I started to like it!
I know, I need help....

 

Try grounding your nozzle to the peice you are blasting. I think this would help. No point getting shocked unless you enjoy the jingle!

 

that's strange, I've done a bunch of sandblasting on several restores and never had that problem. Mine is a pressure feed and I use it on a concrete driveway usually I use 30# mesh 'play' sand.

 

I did a lot of sandblasting when I work in a power plant, and yes at times, regardless of what "Mythbusters" says, the shock can knock you down on your butt. I have seen a spark jump 8 feet and sound like a small caliber handgun going off. The shock is not pleasant.

I tried numerous things to stop it. The best that I found was using leather welder gloves (goes up to the elbow), attaching a #10 ground wire (#12 or greater is not strong enough for the abuse) to the nozzel and grounding it to earth and to the piece and use leather bottom shoes, not rubber. Also. ground your tank to earth and to the hose. On the ground strap, I opened up the insulation at each point where my hand touched the hose for additional grounding. Also, the higher the humidity, the lower the static. I got my worst bangs when the temps were freezing and lower.

There is no way to stop the static if you are cleaning plastic (inside of pipe). I have ran a ground completely through a pipe and still got the bejesus knocked out of me.

 

FP, I am starting to wonder about you <g>.

 

I must have had a hole in my shoe or something, because the arc would go through my shoe and arc to the pedal uaing a cabinet blaster. I didn't mind, they were quite small and rapid, about 6 a minute or so.

grounding the nozzle to something would probably help.

 

You should not be getting a static charge from a cabinet. I would check the electrical connection for a bad ground.

 

I think humidity has a lot to do with it. When I was trying it out, the humidity was about 30% and the next day it was about 85% and no shocks. I think I need to use something besides Jersey gloves also, I have several pair of welding gloves laying around, just didn't think to put them on.
fp_5, yea I think you need help. I never did like getting my "batteries" charged.My Grampa used to pull a spark plug wire and let the fire jump from his finger to the fender of his old truck to impress us kids. It was hilarious when he bought his first truck with electronic ignition and tried this. He jumped a few times and let go of the wire and said" Ouch, that hurts" Never did see him try that again.
Jeff

 

I did because a lot of the stuff I blasted was very small and not easy to touch the piece to the rack in the cabinet.

 

I have had similar issues with shock, and also noticed a correlation between humidity and shock intensity. However, I spoke to someone that does this for a living and he just laughed ( I thought he might withhold somekind of "trade secret")... then he said to wrap a couple of heavy chains around the object you are blasting and let the chain lay on the ground.... problem solved.. worked for me. BTW... I had tried all kinds of elaborate things like running a section of copper wire from the blast nozzle to a copper grounding rod driven in the ground, etc... and all it did was waste time and energy!

give it a shot...
b

 

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I do realize this is an old post - but I just read it and had to comment about another weird occurance concerning STATIC ELECTRICITY... Many years ago I owned a 1963 Chevy II Nova. I had rebuilt the old 6 banger engine in it and had installed a new fan belt, radiator & heater hoses, etc.. After some time I coud hear what sounded like one of the sparkplug wires sparking back to ground while the engine was ideling. I raised the hood and looked at my plug wires and and center coil wire and found nothing wrong there but kept hearing the spark every 30 seconds or so. Finally what I discovered was that the fan belt obviously was building up a charge of static electricity while ideling and when the charge would become high enough a spark would jump from the outer ring of the harmonic balancer (outer ring being insulated from the center or "hub" of the balancer by the rubber seperating the two pieces) back to the timing chain cover. Of course it never caused a problem so I never had to do anything about it. It could have been a whole different story though if a fule leak had developed...

tomcatN

 

Neat thread. I never read it before. I had the same problem blasting my '50 F1 frame. It was grounded by resting on the metal floor jacks at all four corners. It did not help. I just kept blasting thru the static shocks. I blasted mine in the winter time. I wonder if putting a couple dryer sheets in your pocket or gloves might help? (I put them in the seat crevaces during the winter to stop the static door shock. it works for that.)