worthwhile and FREE improvement to the Harbour Fraud Blast cabinets.

markus

Well-Known Member
#1
So for the last 6-7 years I have fought to keep a consistent siphon feed in my harbour fraud blast cabinet. It gets the job done, and I just happily chant to myself as I am wasting time hunched over the cabinet (you get what you pay for, you get what you pay for :laugh:)

Anyway as I was doing the maintenance on the shop equipment, compressor service, clean out of the parts washer, clean out and fresh plastic for the window on the blast cabinet, etc., getting ready to do another batch of engine rebuilds and want that stuff ready to work. Cleaning out the cabinet and vacuum this time I am thinking to myself I really need to look into a better dust collection setup (not even thinking about anything else on the cabinet). I started doing a little googleing and much to my surprise there are ass-tons of youtube vids and DIY mods that people have done to these cabinets!! Not only did I find some inexpensive ideas for the dust collector, but all the other neat and actually pretty cheap stuff to "Pimp my cabinet"

Most really good ones were showing the foot pedal and bottom feed modifications, which BTW definitly looks like the way to go as just a few cups of media in the cabinet is all you need for it to run making chaning out to different types of media for different jobs eazy-breezy, looks like you can drop the pressure down to a little!

That stuff costs money, actually not that much but for now I just have to put it on the wish list (I did order a dust cyclone dust collector today though) But one video I was watching where the guy was giving the run down on the mods he has done he noted a some simple mods to the stock siphon feed he had done which ends up giving it a more consistent media feed. It was very easy to do and FREE (well if you dont have some JB weld, or something similar on hand maybe some of that....I actually just welded the hole I drilled and crimped end up on the tube)

So I wont reinvent the wheel, instead I will just a link to a written thread that the guy on youtube linked to (were he got the idea from) Thanks to a guy named Rondog on early CJ5 dot com forum......I wish I would have gotten off my lazy ass and searched for this info years ago though :doah: modifying a Harbor Freight blast cabinet | ECJ5

I did this today, Maybe a 20 minute job R/R with the welder stitching up the hole in the tube you have to drill and fill in where the drill pops through going through the 2 tubes etc.. I gather that the siphon tubes in big boy name brand cabinets are made like this and the Chinese just dont do it for some reason (maybe they do as of recently, my cabinet is 6-7 years old now)

Hows it work, well it was a night and day difference and I feel like a total schmuck for actually putting up with the way it fed media all these years :anon.sml: It blasted the Tec part I tried in close to half the time it usually takes and came out better :thumbsup: It definitely still looks like the bottom feed mod is a great/best way to go, but till I can actually make a couple bucks this will already be cutting my cabinet time down a little. If you have one of these cabinets I suggest checking this mod out :thumbsup:
 
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