I recently purchased a Speed Blaster, which is a self contained, portable sandblasting unit sold for $60-$70 at various tool outlets. I also own a pressure sandblaster (A TP 99-S that is out of production now, but super nice) and a small blast cabinet (TP 780TL), so I thought some of the members here would be interested in my initial impressions after blasting my new rear bumper and tire carrier.
For starters, it is extremely easy to set up, just install a quick release fitting, fill the hopper with sand, and plug it into your air hose. Sand feeding is extremely reliable so far, presumably due to the gravity feed, and no feed hoses to get plugged. The ceramic nozzle seemed to still be in good condition after an hour or two of blasting, and the lack of time spent setting up was a huge advantage since I was working to finish before some nasty looking rain clouds opened up.
Negative aspects of this blaster are the lack of power compared my pressure blaster. This is to be expected in ANY siphon or gravity feed unit, but it definitely had trouble blasting away the mill scale that was on some of the steel that I used. Second, the size of the hopper drastically limits blasting time before having to refill. This is the major disadvantage of this unit, and I lost count of how many times I had to stop to refill. I knew ahead of time that this would be an issue, but I really wanted to test the new blaster. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably break out the pressure blaster even though it sometimes take some fiddling to get it running right at first.
All in all, it is definitely worth what I spent on it, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. It is probably best employed on parts that only need a small portion blasted, but which are too large to go inside a blast cabinet. This is actually what I bought it for; I plan to use it for localized blasting on the car I am restoring in preparation for rust repair. But if you don't have any sandblaster at all, you could do a lot worse than buying one of these, just plan on stopping to refill the hopper a lot if you try to do larger pieces.
For starters, it is extremely easy to set up, just install a quick release fitting, fill the hopper with sand, and plug it into your air hose. Sand feeding is extremely reliable so far, presumably due to the gravity feed, and no feed hoses to get plugged. The ceramic nozzle seemed to still be in good condition after an hour or two of blasting, and the lack of time spent setting up was a huge advantage since I was working to finish before some nasty looking rain clouds opened up.
Negative aspects of this blaster are the lack of power compared my pressure blaster. This is to be expected in ANY siphon or gravity feed unit, but it definitely had trouble blasting away the mill scale that was on some of the steel that I used. Second, the size of the hopper drastically limits blasting time before having to refill. This is the major disadvantage of this unit, and I lost count of how many times I had to stop to refill. I knew ahead of time that this would be an issue, but I really wanted to test the new blaster. If I had it to do over again, I'd probably break out the pressure blaster even though it sometimes take some fiddling to get it running right at first.
All in all, it is definitely worth what I spent on it, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. It is probably best employed on parts that only need a small portion blasted, but which are too large to go inside a blast cabinet. This is actually what I bought it for; I plan to use it for localized blasting on the car I am restoring in preparation for rust repair. But if you don't have any sandblaster at all, you could do a lot worse than buying one of these, just plan on stopping to refill the hopper a lot if you try to do larger pieces.
