Cleaned by Pete: what a power washer does: Attachments: the "Media Blaster"

Media Blasting, Sand, Coal Slag & Soda

As promised this entry is about our media attachments, yes attachments we have two different types, which we use for different needs and jobs. When first setting up and studying on this entry up I found out there is to much information to cover in one short entry so I am going to break it up a bit and today hit the highlights and then go into a bit more in the later entry or entries.

Wet media blasting is defined as: the process of removing unwanted material with a water stream into which a media is mixed and is contained that throws abrasive particles against the surface with some force causing removal or the unwanted material.

There are several "pluses" and "negatives" of each method or for "Dry VS. Wet" blasting. I will touch on these points and different media in the later blog entry. For now we will discuss the attachment and how and why it works.

Media can anything that can be drawn into the water or air stream. Common media can be screened sand, coal slag, crushed walnut shells, cobs, soda, crushed glass and other products, each of these have different cutting abilities and come in different grades in-order to fine tune your job's need. Wet media blasting or wet sand blasting is using our pressure washer to supply the water stream and the pressure needed to push this media to the unwanted material and remove it. Some of this media is made to cut off that material, some is made to roll thus more or less erasing the material, and then there is some that hit and fracture or explode removing the material more in a later blog entry. The first thing it to get the media into the water stream.

This is the mixing nozzle that draws in the media and them mixes it into the water stream. Picture form Cleaned by Pete

These tips have to be fit to the power washer as are all nozzles we use, as we learned in earlier entries to big of nozzle reduces pressure to small causes other problems and can harm the pump. This nozzle has a tungsten insert to reduce ware form the media (the one pictured below has a ceramic / metal tip combination). In order to draw the media into the nozzle we have to create a low pressure zone. This low pressure zone is created inside the nozzle it will be filled by air being drawn in and in that air will also be the media drawing it though the pickup hose. Drawing different media takes different pressures the nozzle above does not adjust for media flow, so we made special inserts to put into the hose drawing the media to help draw at different rates for different medias. The setup below has an adjustable flow there is a small lever on the side-handle which helps to regulate the draw of different media. To much media in the water stream will slow down the blasting process and will not work as effective, and has more waste.

The small lever on the side handle will help to adjust the media flow, Cleaned by Pete

That is the simple description and function of the media blaster. I will have more on it later in following blog entries as well as different media we use for blasting and why. The following pictures are the media blasters we use, and our setup.

This is a 16hp motor with a 4 gpm @4000 psi nickle plated head AR pump, the tank on the side is a simple hopper to hold the media or we can use it out of the bucket on the right. Photo from Cleaned by Pete

Cleaned by Pete's media blasting washer.


Cleaned by Pete's Landa media or sand blasting wand and sand probe setup.

The below pictures are of each unit the first one we had set up for soda blasting though we can use it for sand and other media it main job is for soda blasting. The other unit is made by Landa and we use it for all other media we use in blasting.