Picked up a sand blaster the other day at Harbor Freight. Pretty cheap, just a venturi style cabinet, but if it turns out to not work well I'll return it. Got it together and hooked up last night and it worked great, for about 30 seconds. Started clogging up and after another 30 seconds no sand. Lots of moisture in my lines. I drained my tank since it has been a couple days, and also cleaned my filter. Still lots of moisture and it'll clog up quickly.
So what do you guys do to ensure you have nice dry air for a sandblaster?
These things - if you have a ton of water they're not magic and they do fill up, but they're dirt cheap and work pretty well for me anyway. Make sure you have a moisture trap at the blaster itself, too:
Thanks for the tip. I'm gonna stop at Home Depot on the way home from work and see if they have anthing like that. If not where do you get yours? It was very humid yesterday so I'm sure that didn't help. Hopefully I can come up with something. Want to get some parts cleaned up tonight.
I think that sounded a little short which I didn't intend! What I should have said was "definitely, that's what I meant by making sure you have a water trap at the blaster too." If you don't have one (one of those glass tube filter/separators), or it's all the way up by the compressor itself, there's no way that little UFO ball is going to dry out the line for any length of time. They're just really helpful when you need to wring that last little bit out for things that really like bone dry air like a blaster or plasma, etc. I'm guessing you have one already and it's placed right where the air is coming out of the tank, which of course isn't as effective as having it down the road a bit so the air has a chance to cool and the moisture has a chance to fall out a bit.
Well I bought a small air filter/water trap (simple stone filter in a glass tube). Put that on the sandblaster. I was able to spray for about 4-5 minutes before it started getting wet and spraying moisture and clogging.
Currently have the one larger filter/trap right off the compressor and then another smaller one right on the sandblaster. Once the comrpessor ran for a few minutes and got warm/hot it seemed like the small filter on the blaster just kept filling up real quick. Emptied it a couple times and dried it out but just isn't enough. Should I just go crazy with these filter/trap things or is there a better way? It doesn't help that it's freakin' humid tonight either. I'm at least confident that the sandblaster is decent, just needs dry air to keep working well.
Bingo - now stick one of those UFO bombs on there right before the trap you put on the blaster. Don't ask me why it works, but that's exactly what works for me!
