Powder Coat Part 4: Sand Blast Booth & Dust Collection
This is my current blasting cabinet.
> You can upgrade your cabinet with better lights. The lights that come with the cabinets are okay, but blasting stirs up a lot of dust. I went to Home Depot and bought some “Mini” sealed quartz halogen lights and put one in each corner
> Something you will find is that there are a lot of hands out to take your money for things “you cannot do without.” One of those things is the protective Mylar film strips to put on the inside of your viewing port to protect the safety glass from pitting. What I do is as I drive around I look for people replacing their old single pane storm windows.
> I pick them up, cut them to size and tape the pieces to the inside of the safety glass.
It is free and lasts longer.
Painters tape works better than duct tape for this.
> It might not seem like much, but a foot trigger pedal helps a lot with fatigue when blasting for long periods of time.
> The gun itself is nothing more than a siphoning air gun. The tips of the gun are a different story. There are basically two different types: ceramic tips which lasts fairly well and hardened steel tips which will outlast the inside of gun.
> Cabinet ventilation is a whole subject in itself. The cheaper cabinets come with what is essentially a vacuum cleaner. My cabinet came with an upgraded vacuum cleaner. Visibility in the cabinet was poor so I went out and bought a Delta dust collection system. This cleared the dust from the cabinet really well, but the small particles of dust went right through the cloth bags of the system and the shop was quickly covered with a layer of dust in no time. This was also very unhealthy for the operator!
>> Oneida Air Systems sells standalone Steel Cyclones. The way a cyclone works is really neat. 
This link shows a video of a clear cyclone working: https://youtu.be/Wr-D2CLyqMg
>> It works extremely well. I have zero dust in the shop now. There was some concern from Oneida that the sand would wear out the inside, but after years of service I still see no signs of internal wear. The Delta dust collection system was cannibalized to provide the suction for the cyclone
>> I came across a description of a homemade cyclone that I think would work. The major components are a traffic cone, two five gallon buckets and lids and some PVC plumbing supplies. You can see the discussion at this link http://www.core77.com/posts/
>> I would change the inlet location for the following reasons I read somewhere that the inlet pipe length should be six times the length of the diameter of the inlet pipe. This is to gives the particles time to settle to the bottom of the pipe as they travel along the pipe so that they enter in a stream, rather than suspended in the air. Also the inlet should come into the cone area as a tangent to get them traveling around the perimeter of the cone and held there by centrifugal force as they fall to the bottom of the cone.
> To save the bottom of your sand blast booth you can put a piece of heavy steel on top of the expanded steel, but do not cover the whole bottom. You want the sand to fall through to be picked up again by the siphon hose on the gun. You wouldn’t think it but the sand coming out of the gun will eventually eat away the expanded steel that covers the bottom of the booth. This is the second piece of expanded steel I have had in the bottom of the booth and it is time to replace it again.
> Wear a good dust mask and hearing protection. 3M makes a good respirator and good hearing protection, and this is what I use. 
Check the operation of the respirator from time to time. Simply put your hands over the exhaust ports and breath in, the mask should suck into your face with no leaks.
> Let me add one more thing about surface preparation. Powder will not “hide” or “fill in” rust pits or other surface imperfections. It will conform to the pit and, if anything, accentuate it. You want as smooth a surface as you can get within reason. Try a couple of pieces and you will find out what you can “get away with”. In some cases this will work to your advantage. Say you have some original stamp marks in the piece you are going to powder coat. These stamps will remain visible for several coats before they start to fade with the thickness of powder coat.
So…what type of blasting cabinet do you need? There are complete small bench top blasting systems to room size monsters. They will all have everything you need to prepare your items to be powder coated. The size, how often and what quantity of items you will be powder coating will determine what you need. Fee-bay often has used equipment.