@@liammccaffery6950 Dry Ice blasting is not too far off from that price range given that you need a big ass compressor to be able to do anything effectively.
We tried dry ice blasting at work to clean used machinery as a greener alternative to high-pressure steam or water. We thought we could clean our equipment without removing the wiring and some other related components and also get a net labor cost reduction. The temperature differential was supposed to break the bond between the dirt and grease and the substrate without chemicals and the removed material could just be swept up and dropped in a trash can. It worked OK, but the noise ended up being a deal breaker: it was loud enough to impair all other work in the factory (170K SF), even in the office areas, so it had to be done on second shift. Buying the ice was a hassle because it evaporated over time (sublimation was the term, IIRC) you needed to order in advance and be ready to use it within 24-48 hours of delivery and also rent a special container. Additionally, even with our interior humidity at 50-60% flash rust was a problem with iron and steel as the parts warmed from -100F-ish. You can also hurt yourself with this stuff, from dry ice burns to asphyxia, if you don't give it due respect. In summary, it worked but was too much of a PITA for even small scale industrial usage, at least for us. It's a great tool for specific uses but it's probably one of those jobs better subbed out.
Yeah plus when you price a system (including a machine to make the dry ice on site) it’s like over $30k going a cheap route. You could easily spend more. Not worth it, sub contract it out all day long.
Just speculating but i still think steam/water is a greener alternative. If you include compressor required, energy to get enough pressure and also storing producing the dry ice. The green ambition is not there anymore. Again... speculating.
@@-ex2598 yes steam is awesome, and eco friendly, but can still have water run off on big, nasty projects. I know because we have a fortador. It will not do as good of a job as the sand or dry ice blasting in terms of reconditioning parts. It will clean then good, but not make them look brand new. The appeal of the dry ice blasting is that when you clean something really nasty, like an old motor you want to look new, there is no water run off or sand to sweep up after. No water run off means no pollution making it to the sewers, lakes, rivers, or ocean which is definitely more green than say a pressure washer or steam washer and heavy chemicals. Sometimes you need abrasives like dry ice or sand to remove imbedded gunk, steam works great on newer parts and vehicles that haven’t been completely trashed though. Much cheaper option too and can be used for many applications around a shop.
@@AK-ui1zl That was our experience. For industrial use a containment and reclamation system is required , along with periodic pumping of the catch sump for off-site processing. In theory CO2 blasting eliminates those concerns since the removed materials are solids they can just go into the normal trash.
I've been a backyard non professional builder for the last 55 years, I use a combination of dry and wet sandblasting in separate blast cabinets. I also have external high volume wide nozzle blast equipment, wet and dry, for items far too large or heavy to go in a cabinet, such as automotive frames and axel/differential housings. The great thing about media blasting is that there are numerous types of media from soda to silicon carbide to Aluminum Oxide to stainless steel shot, and many more, each with their own hardness profile and reusability rating. Plus the pressure can be adjusted to whatever one deems necessary for each job. Nice demonstration, thanks. Next...laser cleaning.
I've don bead (glass or sand) blasting for years and you can control the effect of the glass bead VERY easily by controlling the pressure. You DON'T have to use 200 PSI all the time - I've done it VERY gently on aluminum down to 35PSI or less and still achieved EXTREMELY good results without damaging the underlying metal.
I’ve never understood why people sandblast something and then have to spend hours sanding it to get it smooth. Seems they would have been better off to just sand the rust off. I thought maybe the media was too abrasive. Using lower PSI makes so much sense to get the ease of the sandblasting without leaving the surface rough and covered in little pits.
@@WaterNai Sand it down to reduce the surface profile , but yeah that's not something you usually do. We just use a softer material or less coarse grit. Turn the pressure down on softer surfaces as well. I only do steel and concrete surfaces as well
@@WaterNai I haven't dealt with that. Sandblasting typically is a less damaging way to get rid of rust vs sanding. It's generally more effective as well. Once you go beyond sand blasting you're removing material. Technically aggressive sand blasting is removing material but in a way that looks more like the original part than sanding in most cases.
@@WaterNaiYou have to sand it to remove any imbedded blasting media. Co-owned an industrial blasting & painting biz in the '80's. Also used the equipment in a business my partner & I worked in, (employees ran blasting comp 90% of time). We blasted cars & parts, doing antique auto restos & building street rods. I've blasted & painted just about every part of a car. When we started, we skipped sanding on non-critical surfaces like frames, hubs, manifolds & regreted it later when the paint came off. We were warned, but young & thought we could get by, (can't see no sand... don't come off when you rub... eff it, paint it... oh, chit, the paint comin' off?) We learned... LOL
I also think about the difference like paint … you wouldn’t wet sand and/or compound very thin “survivor” paint. There’s a time and place for a deep cut on paint, and other times where you just want to remove some haze or micro marring. Also the ice-blast is going to leave a lot more natural survivor look to the surface. If I was restoring the engine that header came off, the ice-blasted side looked a lot more “believable”, whereas you were going to need to do something to the sand-blasted one. There’s a time when you really want to strip metal, but for detailing you may just want to remove crusted on dirt and light surface corrosion, but keep a little of the patina … really nice video Larry! Keep up the great work! Love learning from these vids!
There's a company called Coulson based in Canada that makes an ice blaster unit (Ice Storm 45) that can use dry ice and wet (H2O) ice. By manipulating the size and temperature of the ice being used, it can actually give it the same harness as sand, which can allow it to do some abrasive work and would minimize the need for sandblasting. I've personally used one of their machines and it was amazing to use! By far the best ice blasting equipment I had ever used!
I work doing reman for an HGV company, and in our industry, we would never contemplate using either method just not efficient for us, we have two Rosler spinner hanger type blast machines, using chilled iron blast media and a tumble belt type blaster for surface finishing.
This video deserves 10 views by anyone in the world who wants clarity on how to remove corrosion from iron and steel. So clear. Learned so much. Thank you!
You are amazing with the fact that your always learning. I respect that my friend, I’ve learned a lot from you over the years and I appreciate the detail you put into your videos. Happy New Years to you and your Family! 🎊
For DIY sandblasting i used a shopvac and a old plastic tote cut a long side wall off so i had room to work insde with my hands and the shop vac i cut a hole big enough to fit the hose inside to catch about 75% of the sand and then i pulled it out and shop vac the rest up all still contained to mostly the tote, this was a very cool experiment forsure 🤘
I used to clean part with a Dry Ice blaster. Not car parts. Why we used dry ice. It did not remove or damage any of the coating from Teflon to the polished Aluminum, 2nd it was a clean way to removed unwanted build up on the parts. When done you had not extra material that could get down into the internals of the equipment and or damage the clean surface.
Based on your experience here, it seems that the handheld media blast is the way to go, no big expensive loud compressor, just need to sweep up afterward. Your first video about the ice blasting you talked about the dirt that got all over your building. I can't see how this would be worth it for anything other than a small number of cases.
NICE VIDEO BRO! Always watching from the Philippines. I also do detailing myself and I always review through your videos before any work for my clients. Keep it up!
Hi! folks. You would require a shop or semi-isolated area. Dry Ice Blasting is very loud and likely cause neighboring business and residential household people complaining and partitioning against you to have you shut down. Also you would need to wear PPE personal protection equipment as Dry Ice is very harmful to the skin and CO2 could cause suffocation or death. Need very good ventilation while using Dry Ice. It only removes the grease, grime, dirt, road contaminates, loose surface rust and flaked -pealed paint, it does not remove rust or deep oxidation. Yes! it is quick when set up properly but you can miss many angles or crevasses and typically required to make 3 passes because the contaminates will be forced around on the vehicle surface. It can be tiresome to effectively clean a vehicle undercarriage, especially having to remove many covers/panels/splash guards. You would need to charge probably $300 per hour minimal. To get everything you need may mean spending $15K to $20K for starters. How many vehicles are you able to do per day or week or month? Is there a Demand for Dry Ice Blasting? The size of your community or city population as you need customers. Will you need a business permit and license? What about Liability Insurance? Sorry, it could take a while to break even dollar wise to cover cost of the equipment and everything else involved. Sandblasting is a bit cheaper and messy if not done in a booth, sometimes the sand can be recycled with use of filters. Problem with sandblasting can cause damage to the vehicle and its parts, need to know where not to use the sandblaster. Yeah! Dry Ice blasting procedure sound terrific, it is costly. Personally, go to a Auto Detailer, ask them to clean and degrease your undercarriage and pay them $250 to $300, then take your car to get rustproof with KROWN, Corrosion Free, or Rust-Check. Stay very far away from Ziebart the overpriced and expensive place. Ziebart undercoating and paint protection is the worst. DIY with Fluid Film or Amsoil Heavy Duty rust protector. Hope you find success.
by far the most effective (and cost effective at ANY price) is vapor blasting/honing. I know you are confined to the blasting cabinet, but it just makes parts look incredible and, unlike dry blasting, actually protects the metal by smoothing it over, and won't (bizarrely) damage plastic parts. i have one for my outboard shop and its invaluable for getting tiny water passages good as new. i've even done whole engine blocks with it, ready for paint.
But, no doable with larger projects, pieces. Wet blasting seems to be the best there generally, where you can blast most of an entire car in 30 minutes or less.
After many years of restoration on various vehicles I have been very interested in the dry ice method. I have spent thousands of hours "sandblasting" pieces and parts with many different media. Sand, glass, aluminum oxide, walnut shells, plastic beads and steel beads. I don't know if I will ever find a time I will be able to justify ice blasting in my detailing and restoration.
@@marcryvon not entirely, dry ice is being used for detailing cars, and has been in use for ages (at least 20 years over here) in that regard. You can clean an engine bay with dry ice without any harm to the components, removing crud and oil and whatnot, without giving it an unnatural shine. Also, removing gummed up undercarriage sealant is easy and fast with dry ice given the right machinery. Plus, it is not as dirty as media blasting, especially when using it on stuff too large to fit in an enclosure. Where I live, it is mainly used on oldtimers to preserve original parts while removing all gummed up dirt and surface rust, so damaged parts can be identified and removed/repaired, before repainting the cars. You want to change as little as possible from the original stuff, or you have parts with very fine tolerances that just need to be cleaned then dry ice is your friend. If you don't care about damaging surfaces, paint or stuff like that, and can work on disassembled parts, then go for media blasting.
Laser cleaning looks the most attractive to me, it’s a new and developing technology but with selective nm of light you can sinter ONLY the rust without affecting the good metal underneath. Styro pyro did it here on RU-vid with a tattoo removal gun off of eBay.
Tried dry ice blasting at work on some radiators that go in all of the US THAAD antimissile defense systems. First of all, it was extremely expensive to rent and keep filled with ice when you’re running all day. Second, it sucked, it took forever to do compared to sand. If you’re able to blast something with sand, I’d recommend over the ice. If you’re concerned about contamination, ice is a good alternative.
Anyone else watch laser rust removal videos? One of the most amazing pieces of equipment I've ever seen. BUT, you'll probably have to sell your car to buy a lower end one of those bad boys.
That is helpful. I think wet sandblasting should also be compared here as well to show that you are not inhaling silica into your lungs and it is safer.
In regards to old engine parts, you can't beat vapor blasting. My 30+ year-old E30 headers look spectacular, even better than ones that I've had sandblasted and painted. It blasted away everything yet leaving no pitting/scoring and the end result left a look of natural gloss while mainting all of the original detail, including crystal clear part numbers.
Good information, thank you, and thank you for this channel. I looked into Dry Ice Blasting for my 2 daily drivers, and 2 collector vehicles. At the time, an entry level dry ice machine was $10,000.00, and I would need a high-volume air compressor. IMHO, that cost is not feasible for a weekend DIY mechanic/detailer.
The cost is idiotic for anybody. Penny pinchers in accounting would never go for this either. 10k+ for basic machine, special high flow and high pressure compressor, need to source a dry ice supplier, not to mention that protective gear they are wearing and the need to add frostbite coverage to your shop insurance. All for a setup that might see one or two uses a year, versus $500 sand blasting cabinet that you can change the abrasive media, tune the air pressure and reuse the abrasive. OH LOOK IT TAKES OFF GREASE!... So does an apprentice with a bottle of spray nine and a brush.
@@n3rdyg1rl11 the cost is prohibitive for anyone who is only going to do it a few times. But there are many advantages to dry ice blasting. Sure an apprentice with degreaser and a brush could do it but sometimes, you want to be able to clean places where you solvents or liquids would be harmful. The engine bay is one such area. Sure you could mask things off or remove parts but thats added labour and time. Then you also have to factor in the oxidation issue of having standing water on bare metal parts. Even if you wipe off the water or cleaners, you will always miss some. With some vintage cars, that might be what causes issues down the road. Dry ice is expensive no doubt but it does have its benefits.
@@joshuaszeto Thank you for your reply, after many hours of on-line searching, I have not found a shop within 200 miles of my home that offers Dry Ice Blasting.
@@smal1393 i mean... If you do commit to a dry ice blasting system, you basically will be the only one in a 200 mile radius with the ability to offer the service. Sure there are lots of ppl near you with vintage cars they would love to look new again. Might be too expensive for just yourself but you could make all that money back and more
The hullabaloo of sandblasting vs dry ice should include a few more players. Bead blasting can do a fine job of rust removal but even more so, it can prep the metal surface easily and quickly for paint or similar type finish. There are definite advantages and disadvantages of ALL projectile cleaning schemes and procedures.
isn't another big advantage of dry ice the fact that you don't fear beads getting into parts that may cause damage upon re-assembly? I know you mask engine parts before sand blasting but I always have the underlying fear that a few random pellets are hiding in some oil passage that end up scoring things horribly after a rebuild. Hence other techniques too like dipping or electrolysis.
Congrats Larry on getting enough traffic to get comment bots!! Haha, been watching you since forever its so cool to see you at almost 2M subs!!! One of the main teachers on my pro-detailing journey!
I would be interested in a three-way comparison of sand vs ice vs soda blasting. I've used soda blasting and it seems to work just like ice blasting but is far more DIY friendly.
You can make a crappy but mostly useful sandbox for 5 dollars or less. Dry ice blasting I think is for very expensive equipment. And is more of a preventative then fixing a rusted object. I saw a billboard for dry ice blasting. Thanks for the video
I feel like you guys should have explained that the "deep rust patina" you were referencing is the black stable oxide layer (Fe3O4) & is benefitial to keep as it offeres some degree or corrosion protection. I get not leaving orange rust (Fe3O3) but the black oxide dosent need to be removed unless your planning on welding/brasing it or wanted a bare metal surface finish asthetically.
It's like comparing drinking car ethanol versus alcoholic drinks. Both contain volatile carbohydrates. But they obviously have different uses. Dry ice is great for removing oil, junk, or paint WITHOUT causing any serious abrasion. You connect it to a normal compressor, not that monster you have there, and it won't touch the metal. It's not made for that anyway. Dry ice particles don't even have the hardness of silica sand, or powdered glass. But if you do need abrasive action, you sand blast. This versus video is pointless. It's not a competition since they are different things used for different jobs.
I use my dryice blaster for cleaning my already clean car. I can restore my engine bay to factory clean leaving all the stickers wires intact. And I built my own vaporhoning tank in my garage.
Here's a tip. If youre going to need sand blasting, buy a used rig. I made my own sand blasting booth from scratch, and it cost me about 400 bucks. Sure, it was fun to build and looks strange, and works to this day but it still cost me money since I wanted to have the same basic filtration, pressure regulating, and some means of couping the sand blast medium (manual scoopping from the bottom tray) I did a vid on it, thinking it was going to be an awesome cheap way of home sand blasting lol...I was wrong. Still, I dig my tactical sand blasting unit (thats its one main advantage, that its lightweight, big, but easy to move around to where I need it)
I think you may have missed the primary difference, cost. I wanted to dry ice blast the underside of my 56 Chevy, in my new shop, but I did not want the sand and dust everywhere. However, the cost of rental of the equipment has become a big factor!
According to other RU-vidrs, residual sand is a problems with structures of any kind. It's just impossible to remove every grain, and it always shows up in paint.
i use copper slag and kiln dried sand as well; as glass beadblasting at 90 psi using a 90cfm road tow comp. and yes it is silica sand for personal use and use an air fed hood
Awesome man. Under stand about the mess nothing to be sorry about 👍 brought me a camping tent ⛺ to do all my sand blasting in works for me keeps everything in one place yep has windows ECT. Doing small parts works great 😂 happy sandblasting ❤
It’s fun to price the system. From the blasting machine, to the dry ice making machine, to the air compressor to run it all. It’s like $30k for a decent set up. That’s a lot of money for something if you’re not going to use it everyday
Vapor blasting or soda blasting, if your game chemical dips or electrolysis, tumblers. There are so many options and all come with limitations and all require some form of power to do correctly. If you have lots of time molasses works well but is a pain to get off
Speaking from experience (20 years) leave the dry ice decon to industrial / power plant work. The scheduled shutdowns are pretty well planned and supplied. The person pulling the trigger in the driveway didn’t seem to have his trade mastered at all. Sometimes it just shows. Not saying he was doing it wrong but didn’t see any signs of experience, maybe an office jockey? I don’t miss much
there are a lot of different types of media blasting. the key is choosing the best one for your needs. for heavy rust, sand a glass beads, for body work, soda blasting/vapor blasting, for things like aluminum dry ice is the only way to go, it is also good for super delicate things like carburetors. abrasive blasting leaves aluminum looking white in color, and it doesn't look the same as fresh cast aluminum. dry ice blasting is the only way to go for cat aluminum parts.
We offer laser cleaning as a service in Australia - cost to customer is similar to sandblasting but with the benefits of laser cleaning ie non contact and gentle on substrates
Have gotten myself a cheap sandblasting cabin. It's inanse how much I can restore and easily paint now. Paint jobs turn out insane after sandblasting since the paint has a nice grippy surface and also sand removing oils and such. Recommendation for any hobbyist!
Dry ice can be dialed down to clean vinyls, plastics, rubber and electronics. You don't have to even remove parts to work on an engine bay. There's no media left in the small spaces that need to be cleaned out. It's not easy, it can be loud, but it's far more useful when working in tight spaces and when you don't want to have to remove a part to clean it.
to get a class 3 blarst it good to use garnet or sand ,works well on any surface , to not damage panels or thin metal you distence yourself from the job . ice is good for timber and glass and alloy parts but as the guy said you will not get a perfect clean profile useing ice .
There are some science problems here. So the DI cleaning efficacy depends largely on the expansion and contraction of different materials that are stuck together. Rust and steel/iron expand and contract at the same rate, so it won't dislodge it in the same way it would materials that weren't functionally identical. So for example, try the sand blasting on a carpet to clean mold vs DI. Results will be highly different.
I've got a small hood and use metal shot for odd jobs. The beads didn't leave a patina,they resurfaced the piece. Fine if the job calls for it or it doesn't affect anything else but that was pretty darn aggressive. Would be interesting to see how a simple $30 wet media blaster off of AMZ works as I'm considering one for my gas power washer and as its wet you can use generic sand safely. Also set up a kiddy pool and some tarps and you can recover and reuse the sand after it dries and screed it through some screen over a bucket.
Great video Larry! In my opinion aquablast is the best way. Dry ice is gentle, great for cleaning, sand blasting is great for rust removal and resurfacing, but aquablast is the best for both. Cheers 😎 Would love to seea video about aquablast vs laser cleaning.
You really need to get your hands on the newest ColdJet machine, you can adjust the particle size. Seems miles ahead of every other machine on the market
With ice blasting the contaminant you blast off the surface still needs to be cleaned up, it doesn't disappear. I'm not convinced this is the game changer those in the DI industry would have us believe. Plus, the costs are insane.
the sand also removed some of the metal. Use the sand plaster and there will be sand everywhere. while the dry-ice kept the metal in tact. Use dry ice blasting and no mess to clean up. If I had to pick it would be the dry-ice. But, if there was a laser to pick between the three. I would have chosen the laser.
