I've found a place to get glass beads like professional screen use!

[Sir_Vival]

There's the first pic. Notice on the very edges you can see a lot of light..that's because all of the greatroom's lights are on! And look how you can still see the image! I'll post more pics later, with the lights off, and showing where the lights are that are on.

[Sir_Vival]

Oops..hehe..that turned out kinda..big...any way to fix that?

[ace3000_1]

ya send it to mee ill shrink it for ya then edit your post with the new pic, or u can use paint shop pro and use the image resize feature in that, photo shop ect

Trev

[Sir_Vival]

I must say the pictures don't do justice at all to the picture..stupid cheap camera. It's both clearer and a TON brighter in real life, but I'll send the pics to ace tonight. You guys are just gunna have to trust me on this one. Heh. Right now I'm leaning to 10 dollars a pound, so you should be able to do up to 150" of screen with 20 dollars. My screen is 90 inches and I only used a wee bit over a pound to do it.

What's your email Ace?

[ace3000_1]

ace3000_1@hotmail.com hey between the 0 and the 1 there is one of these _ lol

[JTB]

Jtb

i beleive the glass beads u have put the link to is sandblasting beads, ive never have seen them use glass before as it would smash as it hits the surface and would be a very potentional harzard to your health, maybe its the silicon i was talking about in the above post.

They're used for blasting, but you normally wouldn't use them for the same type of work you'd use sand for.

You can use them on steel and cast iron car parts, but you also use them on aluminum and other soft metal and they won't tear up the part. They actually produce a nice, smooth surface on the part. I've had aluminum wheels, intake manifolds, valve covers etc., cleaned with them.

Eastwood says to spray them at 60 PSI, but of course you wouldn't spray them at that pressure if you were spraying them on screen material. I'm not sure you could spray them through a regular spray gun mixed with paint to make a screen anyway. I think they're probably too big for that.

I see Sir_Vival didn't spray his, he sprinkled them and he says it worked, so spraying isn't necessarily even an issue. It sounds like his beads are pretty big too.

If they're small enough, I'd try pouring them in the paint and rolling them on. If you've ever used sand paint, you know the sand is mixed right in and when you roll that on, the sand covers evenly. (In fact, I know for sure one screen company uses a rolling process to apply their glassbead. Maybe they all do, who knows?) But I don't know how Eastwood's "grit" size relates to "microns", which is how screen glass beads are normally measured, so there's no way of knowing if they're the right size without buying some.

As far as brightness, I think they'd have to be purposely given a rough surface to not be reflective. They are glass beads after all.

There's no health hazard unless you spray them on and then you should always wear a respirator. Whether you're painting or you're blasting with sand, glassbead, walnut shells, plastic media or anything else. However, glassbead is normally sprayed in a box, so they don't go all over the place. Blasting Cabinet.

JTB: I spose it would be worth a shot, but the beads I found are made for reflecting. Those probably aren't polished and the such.

How sure are you that you're not just buying glassbead blasting media from this guy? Either way, I'd rather experiment at $1.50 a pound than at no less than $10.00 a pound, especially if I don't know that I'm not getting glass blasting media.

[verbose mustafa]

Lol. That pic looks great.. the bottom light is very bright yet the screen is still bright too. After seeing so many pictures of projected images and live results myself, i can tell what is caused by the camera and what is the actual projected screen lol . I kind of filter out the camera junk in my mind .

[ace3000_1]

Thanks JTB ive seen sandblasting in the area that i work but its the big stuff i work in not the so delecate stuff lol, i take it glass beads in sandblasting is for just an abrasive bash while the heavy sand blasting like used on ships and steal is actually designed to take some metal off and to pit the surface to a degree for the paint to bond better to the material, primer i should say, anyway out of this topic.

Has anyone thought in using alloy powder? its not so exspensive and u can buy it, its just a powederd aluminum and can be polised with a diluted acid, its like talcom power also, if u mixed this into the paint and as piant would cover it id sujest using a mild cut back on the paint to bring the alloy back out to the surface, how much we would mix and how even it would be is the next issue, im thinking in designing a way for this new beading thing that we are thinking , somthing that u would place over the screen when the paint is wet (hung from the ceiling) and it would be like a very small and fine fertilizer spreader motorised to get that even coat, the faster u go over it the less amount of beads u aquire on the screen, the slower the more on the screen ect, i think we should all put our minds to this new diy tech.

Trev

[JTB]

Hi Ace,

Yeah, glassbeading is more for soft metals and finer work. Although you would use it to clean up brake drums or steel wheels too, but I've used it mostly for aluminum parts. A friend of mine works for an airline, so I give him the parts, he takes them to work, dumps them off at the right department, they clean them up and he brings them back to me.

I think working with glassbeads might not be the best thing. Like I said in my last post, you can't clean the screen without risking wiping the glass beads off. You may get sparkles. You may get hotspots. The viewing angle suffers too.

I did find a couple sites that had charts for converting "grit" to "microns". From what I saw, the 70- 100 grit Eastwood beads would be on the big side, maybe. You're still talking about miniscule beads though. We don't know the size of Sir_Vival's beads, so I wouldn't touch them until I did know. And if they're anywhere near the same size as the Eastwood beads, I'd order from Eastwood. From what I've read though, we talking about something that's as fine as sand.

Unfortunately, I have the links to these sites on my other computer, so I can't post them now. I'll post them later or tomorrow if anyone wants to see them, but you can just look up grit to micron conversion on Google and you'll find the same sites I found.

Interestingly, I also found a site that has screens that I think are covered with aluminum rather than glass and they claim they're much brighter than glass. So you may have a good idea with your alloy powder. The only thing I'd worry about with that is corrosion. Will the powder corrode just like a sheet of metal would? If so, sooner or later it's going to get really dull. Unless you have something to cover it with so it won't get any air to it.

It might be a good idea for people to check the avsforums site reqarding glassbead screens. My impression from reading there is that they aren't very popular. That was kind of sad for me, because I'd been looking at these Eastwood products for a while and now I'm not so sure a glassbeaded screen is the way to go.

I have another idea I'm looking into right now. Something I found this morning when I was researching glassbeads and grit/micron size. I'm going to get a sample of some stuff and if it works like we want it to, I'll post about it.

Do you have any links to this alloy powder stuff?

[ace3000_1]

heya buddy na i dont have any links on it but ive seen it and if i hurry up back to australia i can get **** loads of it for free from the smelter lol, what it is is basicaslly raw alloy, its a white powder and its what they melt down to make the alloy into shapes ect, this stuff is very very fine, its white because that is how it comes out of the bauxite refining process, it gets shipped to japan in this case and then just gets melted down and mixed with other alloys to create the different grades of aluminium, now all we need to do is use some cleaner that works like an acid, somthing that u see on the tv from time to time that cleans calcium out of copper and metal pipes ect, in aust ive seen it called CLR, it would bring the powder up like very shinny alloy powder and its chemicaly cleaned so no hard work , ok as for the corrosion, good point, i think it would take a while for this to corode unless u live in a very high humidity area (in the tropical belt and poles) or if u wet it, i think if we used anything like a car polish or wax it would make the screen too shinny, its somthing we would have to work on in the near future, i hope to be going back to aust soon,(i cant wait to try this **** out lol) as for your links yeah by all means post them up man im interested, and thanks for the info on the sandblasting too u can never know too much.

Trev