sand blasting

im in the middle of making a sand blasting cabinet at the moment, its not an easy task as its fairly big and would hold a bike frame with ease.
the exaust fan is a car radiator fan thats powered by a dedicated psu and i still need to make a front door and a media collector for the bottom of the cabinet,
im currently trying to find some angle iron and aluminium box section,
so far its cost me £2, so as im pretty skint right now im trying to keep the cost of building to a minimum.

i have an old oven door which i took some nice handles off and i am going to use the window part for the window for the cabinet

i'll put up some pics later

just wondering if anyone is remotely interested in this??

yeh I am - I love Diy stuff like this.

How are you blasting the sand?

Indeedy. Looking forward to the pics! I believe media such as crushed walnut/Brazil nut shells (for the environmentaly minded) would be better for the thin walls of frames etc.

Im super keen on hearing your prices for cleaning off old frames when your done

thanks all for the interest

This is the cabinet

I have thought about this for a while and have now begun building it.
I still need to make up a front door and veiwing window but progress is slow at the moment due to lack of cash.
The exaust fan came off a scrap car and will have its own dedicated psu which was very kindly donated by a freind.

As you can see the cabinet is big enough to fit a mountain bike frame of up to 21" easily, allthough the kona frame there is only 16" the cabinet is around 29" wide so it will easily accomodate larger frames.
There is some shelf supports in there aswell so i will be able to do small components like stems and forks if needs be.
The cabinet does look a little bit worse for wear at the moment and could do with some fabrication work to get it running, especially at the bottom of the cabinet as there is some rust which im cutting off, The bottom will be strengthened and will have castors and a filtration grid at the bottom with a tray for recycling media.

I did have a job and left on friday due to not getting paid for 2 weeks, otherwise it wouldn't of been a problem so i'm looking for any donations no matter how small for materials so i can get this up and running as quickly as possible.

to jez, the sand or other media will be blasted using quite a big compressor that is capable of 11 bar, not sure what cfm that is but it should be substantial.

ok, got some materials today, bought 2 sheets of metal and 4 lenghts of box section, didnt realise sheet metal was that expensive.
they are small sheets so ill only be able to make up half a door at the moment, so give me a few days and ill upload some pics, hopefully soon i can do get it working.
i still need to get some 1/4"copper pipe and fixings for the media feed so if anyone has anything like that lying around and they dont need it it would be appreciated, any donation is better than nothing, it doesnt have to be cash ...

even a snickers bar to keep me going would be good

Yesterday i started fabricating the various lengths of metal i'm
going to use as the door frame, this took a little while as i had
to keep switching blades over on my angle grinder,
wish my little bench grinder was here. it would make it easier all round.
The peices cut were 2 long lengths for either side, 2 medium lenghts
for the top and bottom, and i thought I'd cut 4 small lenghts to
go into the corners for a bit of added strength.



On sunday i picked up a small welder, its not very good and
runs off the electrode sticks but being my first time for welding
i dont think i did a bad job.
And look, Doesnt that look ok?
The corner strengtheners are pretty cool i think.
With the frame built i will be adding 3 other box section lengths
for the window and where the hands will enter the blasting cabinet.
Thats about it till the next update in a few days.

Talking of sand basting.. I get everything vapour blasted these days, the results are AMAZING!

Is that more expensive than sand blasting or cheaper Davey?

looks messy too...

ive been checking around and i think i have come up with a rough price guide if you want something sand blasted, I think the prices are very reasonable.

Frames = £20
Painted Wheels = £8
Stems = £5
Handlebars = £5
Brake Levers = £5