Moisture in my sandblaster?

Question

I restore cars and trucks for a hobbie. I have a large Ingersoll compressor with a Detroit 3-53 diesel I use to sandblast.
I primarily use 2 different blasters. One takes 300lbs of black slag and the other approx 150 lbs.
My problem has always been MOISTURE.
It drives me nuts and can really screw up a blasting job and take forever.
I do have water traps at each compressor,but nothing fancy.
I'm thinking of building some sort of air dryer/chiller or something. Does anyone have any good remedies or tips?
The compressor puts out a steady 120 PSI.

Answer 1

I also had a moisture problem,but I just got a new compressor and hook my new tank to my old tank. The two tanks hooked together seem to have taking care of my moisture problem.

Answer 2

I feel your pain my friend, I've been down that road and tried everything....building my own dryer system, putting several in-line dryers in the system, etc. None of them solved the problem, at least not completely.

I own an auto restoration shop myself, I've been restoring classics for about 13 years now. The shop itself has been open for about 7. We run 4 bays, a paint booth, and a prep booth. We've got several hundred feet of line run through the shop now...when I started I had one $500 compressor and a paint gun.

The only way...and I do mean only way to remove ALL moisture from your lines is to use refrigeration. All commercial air applications use this method to remove moisture...works the same way the A/C does in your car. The cooled tubes suck the moisture out. Traditional dryers use a stone or paper based filter to catch water...unfortunately they have an inherent problem...they can't process any type of volume. If you run your system for any length of time the majority of the moisture gets through.

We use a Deltech HGE150 in our current system. It's flawless, there is no moisture in our paint work, our sandblaster, or at standard air tools (DA, jitterbug, etc). This is probably a bit much for your current setup. You can however purchase much smaller units...down to an HG10 I believe. You can buy one big enough for your setup for around $800 new and $300 - $500 if you find one on Ebay, new or slightly used.

If that's too much for the ol' budget I'd recommend beefing up the dryers in your system a bit. Pay attention to how much CFM, SCFM a dryer can handle. Put 2 decent units at the compressor and then an inline (point of work) filter at the inlet on the sandblaster. These are typically small circular disks, they must be changed fairly often but do work well. You can buy a 2-3 pack at Lowe's for about $20. This beef-up method will cost you about $100 - $150 total and will make your work much easier, it has to be kept up however and some moisture will get through...you could put 10 traditional dryers in the line and still get some moisture.

If you're really ambitious you can build a refrigerated evap system, there are plans all over the net. You'll need an old refrigerator and quite a few other parts...in the end it'll cost you close to the same as buying a used unit or one off of Ebay.

On a final note before beefing up or adding a refrigerated dryer empty and drain all of your system. If you've got several compressors drain them all, I can recall getting tons of water out of the bottom of my standalone compressors.

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

I made a dryer. I ordered 2 in line air filters from www.grainger.com

I built a 2 stage filter.

The first stage was an air line filter to remove moisture and particles down to .05 microns. Like this part number #4ZL47.

Then the second and final stage was a Oil Removal Coalescing Filter. Which should remove oil and particles down to .01 microns. Like this part number #4ZL39



I had no water or oil particles coming out of my air supply after that.

Answer 4

Here's a Google search for "air compressor dryer"

http://www.google.com/search?q=air+compressor+dryer&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Answer 5

Consider using an inert gas cylinder like argon regulated down to working pressures. Or a good chiller/dessicant system.
http://www.beachfilters.com/index.cfm?action=news&nws_id=4
http://www.plantservices.com/articles/2006/182.html
Home made chiller.......
http://home.fuse.net/davestr4a/Paint/Sand_Blaster.html

Answer 6

e bay air line dryers