I finally got around to peeking at the cry-detailing pictures, and I was impressed, not with the price, but the results. They were spectacular.

Enough superlatives, I was more interested in the machine, then how they did it, so I started poking around and found the company that manufactures them. Although a little pricey -- start at about 10 grand, to have just laying around, then you gotta buy the dry ice pellets, at about 50 bucks a bag -- they are reasonably priced.

That being said: for a poor boy like me, it ain't gonna happen. Sadly, I turned the page. And, later that night it hit me " I have a soda blaster - which is essence the same type of device, although I think theirs has some sort of agitator, to prevent the dry ice from clumping, which may be a problem.

So I thought: why can't I just get the dry ice pellets and use them in my soda blaster, it might work, provided the pellets or granules are small enough to fit thru the nozzle on the blaster. Problem solved, now I may be able to have my cake and eat it thru, a poor mans dry ice blaster.

So I have had this idea poking around in my head, attempting to poke holes in it, and you know what, it could work, maybe not as well as the commercial one, but what the heck, it might. The idea and principles are the same, on there's has a few more features, and mine will be crude at least.

So, anybody who wants to ring in on this, good or bad, as I know it is hare brained -- Sorta like the idea of plating grass for a drive way, we can do touch and gos on it, so why can't we park cars on it, it was laughed out of the park. But, as Gandi said, first they fight you, then they laugh at you, then they join you.

I'm here to cheer you on.

A homebrew dry ice blaster would be awesome. I have yet to see something affordable.

Key issue i've always had with pressure blasters is having enough air volume with home compressors, media size, and controlling clumping.

Not sure how to solve the problems without a bunch of expense but I'll cheer you for trying.

Rent the machine or hire the service. It's not a diy with a normal blaster.

Not sure if you have bothered to take a look at vapor blasting as it is a different process, but there are some DIY built machines on you tube that can be built for $1000 or less -
Leno even has a video on his channel of a commercial grade stainless machine that runs about $10K, with the home shop version runs about $2500. You might also be able to incorporate some of the ideas to a DIY cyro machine -

Cheering you on - please post any updates if you decide to build.

Link to what you are trying to reverse engineer?

Interesting thought, I also been intrigued with what dry ice blasting can do. Unfortunately the cost of the equipment is way up there. It doesn’t make sense for occasional use on our 914 projects. There are services for hire, I suspect they do mostly larger scale commercial jobs. Not sure if they would be interested in a small job on a little 914 under floor pan and inside fenders. However, I found below on the web, these are available in Europe. I don’t know of anyone selling them over her in Canada or States. you might want to check that out.

John

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I don't know how feasible it is, but I'll cheer for anyone willing to give it a try I think as long as you use only ACME parts to build it, you should be fine.