Getting started with blasting

[zarenb]

Hey all! Great forum!
I am new to the forum,and need some answers.Maybe someone can help me out?
I want to start a buisness here in NJ blast cleaning. I have been tinkering with a small 100 lb. pressure pot from Harbor Freight. It appears i love the idea of making things new looking again. I just finished refreshing the rims on my ford lightning with some glass bead and has turned out great.
Now this little unit would be great for small parts,but thats just not gonna cut it! So I found a deal on an Ingersoll Rand 175 cfm compressor and an old Lindsay pressure pot. (see pics) My question is,what type of work can I do with this setup to make some cashflo to buy some better equipment. and what other tools should I look into?
I have read quite a bit on soda blasting and find it pretty amazing! The pot I have from HF they say can be converted to use soda.140.00 or so for the part. Is this truly needed? What exactly does it do? I know this small setup is not gonna make much money,so I was wondering if the Lindsay can be converted the same way for the soda?
Any Ideas or input would be great! Thank You everyone.
Z

[Silverthorne]

Maybe just my computer at work...?

[Beth n Rod]

Welcome to TGS Zarenb,
Please go to your My Controls and add your signature.
I'll have to check into why you can't post photos, I suspect it might be the number of posts you have - newbie status. If you email them to me I'll add them. PM me and I'll give you my email address.

Beth

[Dick Atkins]

The conversion kit for the small pot will reduce the amount of media coming out of the pot. Soda is really small compared to sand or glass beads. Even with the conversion kit it will still be putting out more soda than you need to do the job. More soda out means more $$ to do the job.
The big pot could get a suitable metering valve but it would still be putting out to much soda. If you want to soda blast then get a pot designed for soda, adjust pot pressure and line pressure for fine tuning soda flow. A good soda pot with hose and control valves and a wet head is around $6600 in addition to the pot you will also need a cooler/dryer package $$not sure. These units will make the job go much better and more profitable.
Keep the sand pot for using other media, corn, sand, crushed glass, etc. I do a good bit of corn blasting and tryed using soda through it with the metering valve almost closed and it did a good job but used about 3-4 times the soda I should have and lots of soda dust, dead plants.

[tattwd]

Excellent explanation Dick.!