Olli, (and everyone else) Last year in March, I started setting up my garage for powder coating parts and pieces, thinking I might actually make a buck or two on the side.... No bucks per se, at this time, but still plugging along....
A friend of a friend, gave me a Harbor Freight Blasting Cabinet,... FREE. The price was right huh? Another gave me a HF powder coating gun he'd bought and never opened. The gun was given to me after I expressed an interest in the powder coating. He gave it to me probably
2 years earlier,... but last year in march, I came to realize some potential for some unknown reason.... or maybe because I could see the light dimming on my income source or whatever.... longer story than this one....
When i bought my house 6 years ago, a neighbor was having a garage sale, from which I bought a nice little 25 year old DeVilbiss horizontally mounted 30 gallen Compressor, that was WAY TOO much Air for my needs, but I really enjoyed the extra oomph. I did some mechanickin of sorts and used air nailers and such around the house doing repairs, and had a really great little compressor.... I thought.
I hooked up the little DeVilbiss to that sad little free blasting cabinet and found out what a bunch of wasted time this was going to be using such a little source..... Course it was just a 110v of questionable horsepower.... on 110 it was forever trying to keep up. I feared burning it to the ground, so I went to Northern Tools and stepped up to that 60 gallon upright 3 or 3.5 hp compressor and ran two 220 circuits in my garage (knew I'd be needing a second one for an oven). Hooked her up and found I'm getting better Blasting fulfillment, but It aint enough. I spent 600 US dollars plus some more,.... Now I'm wishing I'd saved a bit longer and went to Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500 bucks would do I think.... LOL
I'm still using that Northern Tools (Ingersol Rand) compressor. I have worked to make the blasting as efficient as possible and think I have the best it can get with the given set-up. Long stories suck but the moral is...........
GET EVERYTHING YOU CAN AFFORD in a compressor. You'll certainly need it for the body working tools and die grinders..... It's all about the highest CFM you can get at the highest PSI (although blasting truly only needs 60 psi,.... no matter what the CFM is.)
If you want to learn how to use a blasting cabinet effectively with a cheesy Siphon feed gun,.... I can hook you up though.
For most of you, unless you plan on doing much media blasting, you won't need nearly as much as I do. But I highly recommend you get as much as you can afford,..... trust me,.... you're gonna wish you had all of it one day.
Those of you who have tons of money to spend, and want to make the rest of us jealous, Screw Drive compressors are actually almost affordable to the home shop. Like I said,.... 4500 bucks. It'll probably outlive it's owner..... Even if the owner is quite young, if you buy a decent one and maintain it well.