Dry ice blasting for cleaning?

[80GS1000]

After watching some rather impressive videos regarding dry ice blasting, I'm curious if anyone here has had their engines or other metal bits on their bike cleaned this way. Seems to gently clean metal surfaces without damaging them OR leaving behind any type of residue or waste material, unlike sand or bead blasting. Seems like it might be the way to go to get a motor super extra clean for paint prep.

[bdalameda]

It works great for cleaning up things - We have used a rented unit at work for doing cleanup of equipment in a food plant. There are not very many of these units around however because they are very expensive.

[80GS1000]

Cool video on Modern Marvels about dry ice blasting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7T2ED4ZFkVQ

[hampshirehog]

You could also try soda blasting. I tried it out recently to clean up a cylinder and head (prep for painting) using only my cheapo compressor and baking soda from the supermarket. The proper blasting soda is meant to be much better but even so I got very good results. The big bonus is that the soda crystals just dissolve in water.

[Old Colt]

The dry ice works well but is hardly available to the home user due to the fact the equipment has to grind the ice to form the media.

I myself do not like Baking soda for blasting since it is a salt. Most of us are trying to clean the damage that salt has done and do not wish to imbed more salt in the bare surface.

My preferred media for soft metals is either walnut shell or plastic, the plastic I use is generally melamine. Melamine is essentially ground up switch plates from houses. The plastic has a sharper bite than walnut shells. The shells are preferred on internal components.

[drhach]

We had a guy come do a demo for us. I worked at a place that refurbished dish machines from restaurants. We needed some way to clean the pump motors that lived under the machines. They were full all kinds of nasty greases and dirt. For starters, it is most definitely not a DIY operation. As was previously said, you need a lot of fairly large equipment. It was also really loud and one problem that we encountered was that it splattered the mess everywhere. Our motors came really clean, but it took a lot of time and it left grease everywhere. All the same, it is a really cool process. Anything that you can do in a cabinet to isolate the debris is a good thing.

[Nessism]

This may draw the ire of the purests but I recently used play sand to blast the engine cases on my 1000 and prep them for painting. My compressor is pretty weak so no concern with removing too much material.