GARAGE: Workshop update (Compressor & Sandblaster update)

I’ve been doing a lot of sand / glass-bead blasting recently. Mainly to get the 240Z parts ready for plating, painting, etc. But I had two major issues.
1. The cheap sandblasting cabinet which I bought long ago never had a dust-suction removed and the Lighting (old FL-tube type) was shit.
2: The compressor was way to small. Means it had to be running constantly (noisy) and secondly, it couldn’t keep the air-demand up, so the pressure always fell too low for proper blasting and I had to wait for the pressure to build up again.
Time to change that. First, I attacked the Suction issue. The problem is, without suction, there is a massive overpressure inside the blasting cabinet, and dust will find it’s way out through the smallest gap. and secondly, you have a ton of dust inside the cabinet, so you basically can’t see a lot:

I thought about how to solve this, and then remembered myself that my Kärcher industrial vacuum cleaner came with a spare hose, which is not needed. So I bought a few adapters for different setups.

I ended up with the simplest solution: A simple adapter, just to attach the vacuum cleaner hose directly. No need for fancy centrifugal filters and whatnot. This works like a charm and is super practical:

Another issue was the Lighting inside. the blaster originally came with an FL-tube type lighting, which was terrible from the beginning and didn’t work properly anymore, so I was basically blasting in the dark. Luckily I figured out that the newer models from the same manufacturer now come with LED-lighting which only requires one additional hole to be installed, and you can use the same Power supply, switches, etc, so I ordered it as a spare part.
Left Old FL-tube, right new LED-tube:

After installing it, it’s a major difference. it’s much brighter than the old one, is not flickering. and generally, having light again is great 🙂

Unfortunately my old compressor was too small for proper blasting activities. It worked, but always took forever.

After looking into many solutions, I decided to go for a proper, new one. The deal was excellent. So I ordered a massive, new Metabo Mega 650-270D Compressor, aka “The beast”

It’s a 270L tank, 4kW three-phase compressor with 11Bar Max and is able to deliver 460l/min at 8,8bar, which is excellent for blasting.
I also ordered a lot of cleaning chemicals, which have nothing to do with the blaster, but arrived with the same delivery:

It makes my old one look quite small, even this was already a larger one, compared to the one I had in the very beginning.

Here we go. everything setup and running. It’s a complete game changer. so much more comfortable and faster. Might have to reorganize some things in the workshop, though. the new compressor is a lot larger than the old one and it’s a bit tight to move around the lift. I have ideas….

While cleaning up the garage, I also decided to reorganzie some shelves to fit larger items.

Now the spare seats fit:

Done:

I also got gifted an Arc welder which my in-law found when he cleaned up his workshop. it’s basically unused, came with a welding helmet and plenty of welding rods, all the cables, etc.
I don’t plan to use it for any car-related stuff, but already built something nice for the garden…

While working in the workshop, I found this buddy trapped behind the workshop window light shaft, So I got him out and released him to the hedge.
Now I plan to get back into action at a much faster pace in the coming days. Stay tuned for more updates, soon 🙂