Thread: Aluminum Oxide

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I have found a local company that can blast my car using aluminum oxide. Will aluminum oxide cause warpage the way sandblasting will? They say it will not. I do not want to ruin the body on this car but it needs blasting bad.

In my experience sand, and alumina are a little agressive and comes down to the skill of the operator in not removing to much metal, and minimising heat build up. A safer option is to use sodium carbonate to blast with, it is nice and gentle. Plastic beads are also reasonable soft, may struggle to remove the rust. Glass beads are more agressive than Sodium carbonate but less so than the sand and alumina.

I would ask around your local club or someone who has restored a car in your area to find out who is good at the media blasting, and then talk to them as damage or poor work can be done when using any type of media.

aluminum oxide is rated [ high] for metal removal. i would not recomend it. i use plastic media here and starblast for rusty frames and floors. you can go to [url]www.nortonsandblastingequipment.com and see all the blast product ratings. if the co thats going to do it does'nt specialise in restorations i would pass. aluminum oxide is very harsh. i did a frame with it and pitted it bad.

I would not recommend someone blasting a car with aluminum oxide. It can be done, with very good results, considering the person knows what they are doing and uses the correct size (grit size) of material. But, as the others have said, there are other products that are alot better to use and will not run the risk of warping any panels.

Aluminum oxide comes in a wide array of sizes. (as large as 10 grit, and as small as 320 grit) Starblast is a 120 grit material. Assuming blast pressures are equal, 120 grit aluminum oxide will do the same job as Starblast and leave the same finish. However, aluminum oxide is a much more aggresive media that will work alot faster. Starblast also has the natural ability of not creating as much friction heat as most other hard abrasives, this is why it is used on thin metal without the high risk of warpage.

You hear people talk about removing metal when blasting with different types of abrasives. The amount of metal that is removed (even when using aluminum oxide) is very minimal. About the same as when you sand a metal panel. It takes someone who really doesn't know what they are doing (or someone who is intentionally trying) to remove an appreciable amount of metal by blasting.

David

dave, i believe i got hold of some #10 aluminm once. i blasted a frame with it and it threw sparks and raised cane. damn near ruint a frame. they used it to blast the inside of tanker trailers so it was probly the coarse stuff. so far so good with my setup. i'm using really low preasure and seems to be working fine. glad your around to put some real knowlege of the products in here. helps a lot. thanks

shine

It's not very often that I get to offer help on mechanical issues on a forum like this. As much as I have worked on and raced cars, I realize that I still do not know that much. Abrasive Blasting is something that I know ALOT about. Not EVERYTHING, but ALOT. When something I am not sure of comes up, I DO know the people who will have the answers.

I am always happy to help in any way I can
David

PS I have a customer that blasted some pipelines and they were able to blast after dark due to the sparking produced by aluminum oxide.

As you can see the car really needs some type of metal stripping. I thought about stripping it with a 10" DA and 40 grit and blasting the hard to reach areas mysefl. I would ratherfind someone to do a good blast job but I do not want to take a chance of ruining the panels. The same place offers a soda blasting but I don't think it will remove the rust. I'm kind of stuck. I really need to get this done and move on.

my shop is in ranch country. not much here. we did a 55 chevy coupe last year that we stripped using the 3m system. it's a lot of work but will work. we did'nt have a lot of rust to deal with but you can get r done this way. you can go to my web site under projects and look for glenn musiks 55. ofcourse after this one i build a new building for media blasting good luck

i'd believe it. i was at the old trailmaster tanks place. lit that sucker off and thought i was welding god only knows how much preasure it had. i like the gental way with no damage.