How To Properly Set-Up Your Blasting Equipment

Hello, I’m Vince Pezzott and today we’re going to talk about a proper blasting setup. So the first thing you’re going to have in any blasting setup is your compressor. It will always have startup procedure instructions on the inside of the door. We’ll start the unit up, let the unit warm up and then turn the air to the run cycle and then high or low.

From there you’re going to have your air outlet. There’s always a ball valve that can connect to your house and from there you always want to have safety restraints called whipchecks and pins in your couplings. This is crucial for any blasting setup and if you follow the bull hose, you will work your way to an air prep. This is an ADS400 Air Dryer.

And from there you’ll come out to another moisture strainer. Again, inlet and outlet ball valves are crucial. Safety whipcheck. No pins with a spud fitting. If you follow the bull hose, you’ll get to your blast pot. And on the blast plot again whipcheck, spud fittings and inlet ball valve. When you open up the pressure to the pot, you always want to make sure you have the dump valve closed.

And what this does is allows the pot to become under pressure and ready to blast then through the choke valve, through the auto air valve, down to the pusher line, through the metering valve and off to your blast hose. Now, let’s talk a little bit about the blast pot. This is an electric setup, so we use alligator clips and battery leads to supply the electric solenoid.

From there, our deadman lines hook up and go all the way to the end of the blast nozzle for the blast trigger. Let’s move on to the metering valve. This is a Schmidt Thompson Valve II with a two inch bass for high flow. Here’s our blast couplings, safety pins and whipchecks again. And our control lines go in parallel with the blast hose.

And if you follow it around, you now get to the blast deadman or trigger and nozzle holder and nozzle. So in a standard application, you would push in the safety and then squeeze the handle and you would be blasting under pressure. There’s a lot of tools that people use in the field to tell if they’re blasting pressure is proper. One is a needle pressure gauge.

You simply inject the needle – have a helper – into the hose facing with the abrasive stream, and that will give you a live PSI test during blasting. So that is our blasting procedure. And if we move on over, we’ll go through safety when it comes to breathing air. If we go back to the compressor, you’re going to see a Chicago line, safety pins, and whip checks.

Over to what we call a GX4 and Radex filter. So the Radex filter itself – this is – comes in. Pins and whipcheck. A regulator to regulate the breathing air inside the helmet. Another regulator to regulate the PSI going in through the (GX4) monitor. What this filter does is it cleans any oils or contaminants that may have passed through the compressor air that would be going to the Blaster’s helmet.

The monitor is supplied by battery clips, 12 volt or 120. You turn on the monitor and the monitor will give you a reading. Anything under ten PPMCO is good for you. And from there we go on to the breathing air line. Standard RPB fittings are different than a normal compressor, and they have a special fitting with a longer neck.

And what this does is keeps you from putting any old air hose onto your breathing air in case there’s contaminants in the line. If you follow the breathing air hose, we go to our blast helmet and from here we have what we call a C40. And this allows you to have either cold or hot air into the helmet and a dial which regulates how much air goes into the helmet.

From there, the air goes through the backside of the helmet, as you can see here and into the screen so that you never fog up and you have fresh supplied air while blasting. There’s an outside cape to keep the abrasive off and an inside cape for comfort. And pads inside the helmet like a motorcycle helmet. And what this does is allows for comfort and the helmet itself moves with your head when you turn. The older versions would stay put and you would turn your head and you would see the side of the helmet. Likewise, where the Nova 3 actually turns with your head. Of course, blast gloves are mandatory. Blast coveralls keep you safe, and that about sums it up.

If you have any questions, contact BlastOne. We’d be glad to help you through your next job.