Revisiting our soda blasted carby and re-blasting with fine glass bead
In a previous blog post we blasted a carburettor using soda and explained the benefits and drawbacks of that method.
Contrary to popular belief, soda does not give a bright finish (due to its angular shape). Its main advantage is in situations where glass bead or other media could cause issues if allowed to remain inside internal moving parts. However, if the desire is to get a nice bright finish then glass bead is the way to go.
We took the soda blasted carburettor, changed the media to AH glass bead and went over it again in our Dana-Ridge COMET machine.
As you can see, even from photos, the difference between the finishes is quite distinct.
Even though a bright surface finish is achieved on this part, it’s possible a brighter finish could have been achieved if glass alone had been used rather than the soda first.
AH glass bead is only 45-90 microns in diameter and has a flour-like consistency. It is the finest glass bead we supply and is most useful on uncoated parts where you require a nice bright finish or when cleaning plastics.
The small spheres have less of a peening effect than its larger stablemates but although you could remove paint with it, the low mass of the particles make it fairly uneconomical for such a task.
The mid to large size glass beads achieve this much more efficiently and the angular media even more so.
To learn more about the various media types available, please check out our page on choosing the appropriate media for your wet blasting application.
