I too, could not see operating without the Blast now that I have one.
I too, had serious white residue issues with Grainger glass beads within two weeks of owning it and did a whole thread about it with Formlabs Support claiming this to be “very rare and the only case they have ever seen of it”…in which they requested I send them the liner to inspect with nothing heard other than receiving a replacement liner and switching to their plastic beads.
See how bad that white residue got here within only a dozen cycles
https://forum.formlabs.com/t/blast-residue-from-tumbler-on-parts/40671
After switching to their plastic beads I have never seen that residue happen again.
I did have to increase the gap distance in some of our parts to prevent the larger plastic bead from getting stuck in cracks but I can tell you that I run “pocketed parts”….think knife sheaths…and the polishing bead has no issue getting into all the tight enclosed spaces.
I run a standard “Pre Blast” on the parts. Then I inspect these pockets before running a short polishing cycle on them. If needed, I will hand blast each cavity out quickly before that polishing cycle.
I post process them in Rit Dye (graphite color) and what is awesome is that the slight polish makes the part a little less acceptable to grease, stains, etc… it “slicks the surface” a bit over the rough texture.
Also after Dye’n them and letting them dry, if they have any dye blotches on them a quick polish run in the blast cleans them up perfectly.
What I also love is that I can print and post process a batch of parts, plastic bag em and put em on the shelf and if it has been awhile or they happened to get a “mark on them” in storage, traveling to an event, and/or someone sends me back a return “rarely”…. I can simply throw em back in the blast for a very short polishing cycle and they come out looking like new.