High Visibility Sandblasting Cabinet Building Ideas

In another post about “5 Ways to Light Up Sandblast Cabinets“, I mentioned that I would further discuss some ways to build high visibility sandblast cabinets. This is something I don’t really hear folks talk about much. The whole idea of this post is to create a cabinet that allows a lot of light to shine through.

There are two ideas to do this below:

Large Viewing Window Cabinet Build

This is the concept I used when building my first blast cabinet. Although the build was crudely made with scrap I had, it worked well because the large viewing window allowed more light in. Most cabinets are designed with the viewing window only covering a portion of the top side, while mine spanned the full width and height.

I made it out of the following materials by:

• cut an old bed frame which is a 90 degree angle metal and welded it together in the shape of a cabinet frame.
• welded a piece of sheet metal to the very top where the dust collector hose goes in.
• cut out a funnel design from sheet metal, bent it and welded it to the bottom of the cabinet.
• Welded a large pipe nipple to the bottom to drain the abrasive. Added a cap
• cut out sheetmetal doors and securing it with hinges to the side.
• used expanded metal from the hardware store for the cabinet floor.
• cut glass to fit in the back wall and top viewing area.

As stated in the previous article, you can easily add an external light that shines in. Any inexpensive light would work and you wouldn’t have to worry about the sandblaster damaging the light inside. Cool!

All Sided Plexi-Glass Cabinet Wall Build

To expand on the previous idea, you could even cut sheets of clear plexi-glass or acrylic glass (such as here) for the top and side walls for even greater light visibility.

To build it, you could do the following:

• Hold the sides together with metal angle brackets like this http://amzn.to/2lx5frZ or this http://amzn.to/2BZcrUr
• Drill holes in the plexi-glass and use a small screw such as this and nut like this to tighten all the edges together with the brackets.
• To further add structure and seal the edges, you can apply an acrylic glue, such as this http://amzn.to/2lwuTNn, to all the edges.
• Even if you glued the edges with acrylic glue previously, you may still want to apply any type of caulking here to prevent abrasive from seeping out.

I have never seen this done, but I like the idea. After sandblasting a couple times, the abrasive will abrade the sides of the plexi-glass sides causing it to frost but it should still allow a lot more light in than an opaque wall would. Remember to at least use a removable/replaceable film over the viewing area of the cabinet.

I wonder if this idea would create a lot of static though. If anyone ends up making something like this, please let me know in the comments below or via email. I would really like to see a picture of the end result.