media blasting aluminum?

Neo

Neo

Member
I bought a motor a few years ago that had a very nice, shiny but slightly rough texture to the finish. I picked out what looked and felt like steel shot wedged down into the cooling fins on the head. Has anyone worked with steel shot, can it be done with a small blasting cabinet like Harbor Freight's and such? I picked up another motor from the UK that looks like it was rinsed with salt water, then set in the corner of a shed for a few years getting rained and snowed on. I'd cleaned it up with aluminum oxide but that turned it white and I'd like to get it looking like the first motor. Any suggestions? thanks
 
media blast

use a small blast cab. i like plastic blasting or glass beads . plastic make it look like new gray look,glass give a shine with a sparkal pat . jim
 
I've been doing just that for over 20 yrs, I now use a black color Alum. oxide media, that I get at Harbor Freight. You also might use a heated tank with water and simple Green in it.
 
Black Beauty? While employed with the Highway Dept we used a medium called Blk Beauty, that stuff was super fast at removing rust/slag/corrosion from our vehicles, way better than silica because it was so coarse, lots of sharp edges on the grit. Maybe it was the coarsest grit, not sure. I'd make sure before using it on a prize motor block or anything made from aluminum/magnesium. Another thing I was told by a person in the industry regarding silica/glass beads is that silica will open the pores of metal therby cleaning giving any coating better bonding properties as opposed to glass beads as they close the pores trapping crud and preventing a good bond
 
The original Black Beauty was made from Coal Slag crushed into sand like particals,Very sharp & very fast. It use was industrial media blast.Lower dust than sand. Ron
 
jack burroughs said:
No, it's a satin finish, I think the grit is called, " Black Beauty". I've also used it on spark plugs.
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What psi is your compressor set at? Ive used black beauty in my hf blast cabinet and if not careful, i can eat straight through aluminium. If im talking about the same thing, is black beauty aluminum oxide? Ive started using walnut shells on aluminum. Takes a little bit longer, but is always softer than the metal I'm trying to clean.
 
soda blasting is the way to go for alum/or engineparts. As it is bio-degradable you can wash everything down after soda blasting with soap and water. I have a HF blast cabinet and use silca in it. I use my presure pot blaster outside with the soda. I use plain old baking soda.
 
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