Fantastic

Aluminum oxide is the media of choice for powder coat prep. What grit size of aluminum oxide do you use?

70 grit. But it is Harbor Freight brand lol.

@@hhman That should still work well.

Our reclaims feed the gun, so the media is continually air washed and you can keep blasting.

Yes. Steel shot is much more dense than aluminum oxide which makes recovery more challenging. But the biggest issue is the explosive hazard that is created when blasting with the two.

@blastitall what do you mean by an explosive hazard? I've mixed them together unknowingly. I have a metering valve. The biggest issue it seems is my flow is not good and it's clogging.

@@BimmerFix The flow issue is most likely related to the density and weight. Steel Shot 300lbs per cubic foot Aluminum Oxide 240lbs per cubic foot When you say "mixing" if you mean using them at the same time, that is a bad idea. If by mixing you mean switching back and forth, you need to make sure everything is cleaned out when switching. This is from the SDS for steel shot Particles liable to produce a fire hazard are the following: •Metal dust. •Plastic dust. •Dust produced when blasting metals coated with paint, rubber, etc... The SDS can be found here: blast-it-all.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/SS-SDS.pdf

@blastitall thank you for your reply. In this case, any blasting is a fire hazard, it seems. I guess the mistake I made, I dumped 50lbs of AlOx and 50 lbs of steelshot together in the blast cabinet. Then I realized that's too much, so took most of it out. Still can't blast with good flow...BTW bag of 50lbs steelshot was 5 times smaller than 50lbs bag of AlOx. Should I just throw it out now? I figure there's no way to separate them now...

Yes and no to fire hazard. Aluminum oxide, glass bead, and crushed glass are not listed as fire or explosion hazards. However, organic media, steel shot, and some others are. As for the mixture. I don't think there is a good way to unmix that.

After further research, I believe my parts were actually shotblasted with steel balls. They seem pretty heavy like they wouldn’t fly around in the air like sand would. Are these also toxic to breathe in? Sorry, I’m just learning about all of this now and just paranoid about the toxicity of these packages I’ve received.

Without knowing exactly what the media is, it would be hard to say. Most commonly used media is not considered toxic, but would never recommend breathing media dust. We always recommend the dust is removed from the environment.

@@blastitall Thank you for the clarification. I appreciate it!