I’ve been thinking about getting a soda blaster for a while, so I recently picked up this 10lb capacity soda blaster kit on eBay. This is intended as an augmentation to my blast cabinet which I usually use with glass bead, though I also have aluminum oxide media for heavy work. Soda blasting, which uses an industrial version of baking soda or sodium bicarbonate, is less aggressive than other media types and is great for cleaning relatively delicate surfaces, such as aluminum. Though the capacity may seem a bit light at 10lbs of media, I’ve found for my use this hasn’t been an issue at all. So far I have not come close to emptying the tank during a single blast session.
This is an extremal blaster that is, the media is not contained in a cabinet so it’s used outside and is a total-loss system, there’s no recovery of the media. I’ve used it a couple of times now on the Kawasaki ZK650 cylinder block, and it works well, if a bit messy. Personal protective equipment is important when using any media blaster, this one included… a decent respirator and eye protection at minimum.
The media is not your kitchen-quality backing soda. I bought a 50 bag which is specifically made for blasting and is much coarser in texture than the soda used in the kitchen. An interesting note, the media is the familiar Arm & Hammer brand, which is a registered trademark of Church & Dwight, an American manufacturer of household products.
