harbor freight sand blaster

i have had one for 3yrs and have never had it work right. i there is nothing broke on it and the mangager said the only problems with them never working is that the watercatcher peice would be broke with its not. it took me about an hr the first time i used it to get it too work right but that was the last time. now it plugs up at the tip and i cant get it to work. anybody have this problem and does anybody got any uggestions on where they bought thiers and if you like it.

The one O have would not work like I wanted it to till I removed the valve at the bottom of the tank and once I did that it does a pretty good job. Been a few years since I used it last so with out looking at it I can not explain it any better

You gotta keep the sand dry. And unless you have a drier in your air line, the air will have moisture in it, and it will soon clog up. You can't run a sandblaster directly off a portable compressor.

It takes a lot of air to make it work right. Also humidity in the air affects it even though you have the water filter. Don"t open valve on bottom of tank very much or it will stop up. I try to use mine on hot dry and low humidity days. They are a pain when they don"t work.

I just went through the same issues with the sand blaster. Buy black beuty fine grade blasting media only. Do not open the valve on the bottom of the tank all the way or it will plug. I set my sand blasting tank on a set of horses so I could reach the throttling valve easely.

i always new i had to keep the sand dry but with that fine stuff its hard to tell. ive had the sand and blaster by with milk cooloer compressors drying to dry everything for the past week. i probly know why now. using a small air compressor but not a pancake, its down where the moistoir is the most and im opening the vlave all the way. where do you get that type of sand. cheapsest i find it is at tsc for like $10 the last i saw but im sure its double by now.

You have to use the driest , finest grade of blasting media you can find and then it will still plug at times

Agree. No big deal. Clean the nozzle and get back after it.

Mark

I have a 10 gallon size HF blaster and my experience with it is Black Beauty won't flow well enough to work. White Silica sand is all that I find works well in it. It also must be dry. I leave the water trap drain cracked open while using so any water is constantly drained. The sand valve is usually about 2/3 to 3/4 open for good efficient blasting on mine.

I have one. I found like others said that the sand has to be dry. I also have to have the sand flow from the tank shut way down and have plenty of air flow. I bought a load of corse washed morter sand which clogged no mater what I did. I put it in large cardboard containers and let it set in my warehouse for two years. I remembered it was out there and it worked fine. It was another year before I wanted more and it was gone. One of the night foreman used it in the parking lot when we had a ice storm so I was told. Never got around to getting more set aside.

I dont know anything about the HF sand blaster, but had an experience with one from TSC that gave me fits untill I read the instructions carefully.

My TSC sand blaster is a vacuum type, which sucks sand from the bottom of the sand tank, through a hose to the blaster gun.

When I first tried the thing I pushed the sand suction hose fully on the nipple on the bottom of the sand tank. The thing was pathetic, would hardly suck any sand and plugged the hose / nozzle constantly.
I set the thing aside, deciding it was a sad piece of unusable junk.

About 2 years later i needed to do some sand blasting, so drug the blaster back out to see if I could make the pathetic thing work well enough to get the job done.

I read the instruction sheet and found an adjustment that I had originally missed. It seems my blaaster was designed to spray either liquid cleaner or dry sand.
The part I missed was that the hose nipple in the bottom of the tank has about a 1/4 inch air bleed hole in it's side, about 1/3 from the tank end of the nipple. To spray a liquid, you push the suction hose fully on the nipple so the air bleed hole is blocked. When using dry sand, you only push the suction hose on part way, so the air bleed hole is exposed to the air. This puts the sand on a stream of air to carry it to the blast nozzle.
I checked and yep, I had the hose pushed fully on, blocking the air bleed hole. I pulled the hose off the nipple far enough to expose that air bleed hole. and gave it another try. My formerly useless piece of junk was now a metal eating tiger, I think I could cut 1/8 plate with it.
I tried all of the several different bags of blasting sand I bought when trying to get the thing to work. It now ate all of them like a hungry bear.

Might some simple little adjustment like that be the problem with your HF sand blaster ???

Ive had one for 10yrs and it works just fine i use the white silica and sometimes the brown that i buy in bulk i screen all of it so its without any stray large pieces i dont have any problems you do need a moisture trap with any blaster and clean fine sand that will clear what ever tip in use same way with my large blaster on the portable compresser always screen your medium.

i have a sandplant about 12 miles from me that makes blasting sand, if i use a small tip on my blaster i have to sift my sand through a kitchen sifter to get the big peices out and there are plenty of them...if i do that i get along fine

I had a portable pot I could carry around. It had a hose nipple at the bottom that a hose slipped over. There was a 1/4 in hole between the hose and the tank, so it would suck a little air with the sand. The only time it would plug is when a large piece of dirt covered the hose in the tank. Stan

Cheapest for me to use play sand I buy at Lowes.Then I sift it through a screen bottom bowl I made.

where does everybody get the sand they use. havent really searched for any. have any of you used the tsc sand because thats what im using now. i think it is called black diamond or something. cant remember without looking at the bag.

Have used nothing but sand from TSC . Have not had any problems with it inspite of several opened bags being in an unheated storage shed for a couple years. Don't remember the brand on the bag.

Mark,

I have 2 pressure pots.. One is a HF/TSC unit (same dang thing, different brand names) and I had troubles similar to yours, at first..

I screen my sand with a fine screen, even if new in the bag.. You still get some chunks sometimes, and then you have problems. Dry sand is a verrrry good point also.

I close the "feed valve" before filling, then fill, close, and put air to it..

For air I have a 60 gallon vertical compressor that puts out ~14cfm @ 90, and I couple that with my gas compressor, which the cfm is unknown, but it lacks in the volume dept, as it's a 5 gallon wheelbarrow type, but has a 8 horse engine and a bigger pump than my electric one has.. I tie the gas into a port I plumbed into my stationary. I leave the drain valve on the stationary cracked just enough you can see a drip or just hear air coming out. From the stationary, I run about a 30 foot hose, then a water seperator/regulator (and I leave the drain valve on that cracked as well) then another 25-30 feet of hose, then there's the water trap on the blaster.

Once the pressure pot is full, I start to blast, and slowly open the feed valve until I get the right feed.. (I made a rod that hooks to the feed valve so I don't have to bend over, I can adjust it right at the top.. it was really simple to do.. drill a hole in the feed valve handle for the size rod I have, then heated the rod and bent it around so it comes to the top and will still open/close the valve)

My second pot is a ALC.. and it's a better blaster.. Easier to fill, the tips are slightly more money, but seem to last forever (One costs about the same as the pack of 4 replacements for the HF unit, but last WAAAAAYYYYY longer.. I had used up 4 or 5 hf tips in ~200 pounds.. the ALC has shot well over 800 pounds of sand, and the tip is hardly worn).. It just all around seems to work better.. I use the same setup for air, and the same deal to get it off and blasting.. I recommend the ALC.. Mine is WELL USED (belongs to my uncle, who has not used/needed it in many years) but if he ever needs it back, I will certainly buy my own just the same as what he has, as the model seems to be available still.. Slight updates have been made, however.

As for my sand, we have a bagging plant near here ~30 miles and a lumberyard that sells it ~4 miles.. The stuff at the local lumberyard is, IIRC, bagged/labeled as a quickrete product.. I think last summer it cost me about $8.50 a 80lb bag.. I can get it cheaper at the bagging plant, but I usually only buy a few bags at a time, so it's easier to go to the lumber yard, plus with work, it's near impossible to get to the bagging plant during normal business hours (I can also get the sand at the bagging plant even cheaper in large quantities, if I want to just let them dump it into my dump trailer it's cheaper still.. and I'd do just that, if I knew I'd use it all up in short order or had somewhere to keep it dry)

Brad

I"m thinking that the "Black diamond" stuff, is
actually crushed foundry slag. It"s Very Hard, and very aggresive, and great for dirty rusty
blasting, but can do damage to fine stuff.

On my HF blaster I have to first screen the sand, then barely crack open the sand release valve at the bottom of the tank. Then while blasting with one hand I (or my wife sometimes helps)have to constantly rock the whole blaster back and forth to keep the sand pouring through the valve. If you don't rock it, it stops pouring. It uses a tremendous amount of air (as they all do) and is just about more trouble to use than it is worth.