Blasting case w/ water soluble soda?

[euro911sc]

Its cheaper for me to buy a cabinet from HF (up the street) then take all the stuff I need to blast somewhere... so....

Looking around for media I found this:

http://www.universalminerals.com/soda-blasting-sofstrip.shtml

Seeing that it is water soluble and in the list of applications says:

* cleaning fragile aluminum auto parts

Would I be able to blast the case exterior and then wash it down with a pressure washer with some assurance that water soluble media will be washed out and away with no harm done... ? ? ?

or do you think I should still pull the oil galley plugs?

If its water soluble will it also dissolve in oil?

Looks interesting

Best regards,

Michael

[304065]

It's baking soda. I ran a company that blasted with it for a while. It will dissolve in water, or, remembering the old science days, in vinegar!

The finish it leaves is very fine, but you need very high pressure and VERY high CFM to make it work, as well as specialized blasting equipment.

I wouldn't worry about blasting with it as long as you could immerse the case in a mixture of vinegar and water for a long time and agitate it to make sure everything dissolved. The soda's not very hard, not like sand or glass beads.

To be very safe, of course, you should pull the plugs.

[Steve@Rennsport]

We use soda blasting for everything and it FAR surpasses any other media blasting for surface finish, cleanliness, and no worries of damage from leftover particulate matter.

John's right though, we had to spend a LOT of money on special equipment and a 15HP screw-type compressor to do the job. That said, our glass-bead cleaning cabinet is only used to remove rust & scale from ferrous parts.

[euro911sc]

So I guess my $200 single piston home depot compressor and harbor freight blast gun wont do the job?? hehehe figured I'd have an equipment problem, but was interested in this.

Can one remove the oil galley plugs at home or is it a shop task? where exactly are these? Ar they threaded? Thought I read somewhere about threading plugs...

Oh, what grit of glass bead do you use most often? I got 25 lb. of 80 for the steel stuff and valve covers.

Thanks!

-Michael

[911 tweaks]

if planning on powder coating after "surface abraiding" with what ever type of material/process, I was told that the surface needs to have "tooth" so the pcoat can best stick. Thus, a real shinny and smooth surface won't work. Dosent make sense to me though. I think this comment comes from a lazy coater that only wants to use 1 media(glass) and is not too concerned other than that his coating will stick.