Anyone Soda Blast?

[DaveTN]

I am looking at buying a bead blasting cabinet. I have a lot of experience with very fine glass bead blasting, but have never used baking soda. I have a project that I probably should do with soda. But I want to be able to use either.

So my question is this... from what I have read baking soda breaks up, so that would means its not reusable? So I wonder what will happen using it in an enclosed cabinet?

I don’t want the kind that is not contained and you have to use outside.

Can anyone offer any insight?

[Hozzie]

I have a small table top cabinet that has worked great with glass beads. You need to hook it up to a vacuum of some sort or you end up not being able to see anything. I would think soda may work ok, but I think you may lose a lot to the vacuum being it is so fine. Edited January 9, 2016 by Hozzie

[Sam1]

There may be some people that use it in a cabinet, but I don't personally know of any.  Soda completely disintegrates during use, so you won't recover any useful material.  Also hozzie brings up another point, it's nothing like glass, so there's no telling how hard it will be to see anything.  Any benefits from a vacuum system would probably depend on the volume you're using.

 

I have never personally used soda but have been around plenty of people doing auto restores and never once seen it used in an enclosure.  All my parts I do with glass or aluminum.

Edited January 9, 2016 by Sam1

[peejman]

What are you blasting? Perhaps a different media like plastic or walnut shells would work. All media breaks down over time. We change out our glass media cabinets every 10hrs or so, I think.