I started out blasting much like you are considering. I purchased a freestanding blast cabinet from Grizzly here in Bellingham, which seems no different than the Harbor Freight equivalent, just more expensive.
Problem #1 - volume of air. My upright 28 gal craftsman compressor couldn't keep up, plus it was loud and obnoxious. I now have a 60 gal single stage DevAir compressor which makes a huge difference.
Prob. 2 - lighting, clarity. I almost immediately had to upgrade the lighting in the cabinet to see in it while working. On top of that, hooking up a shop vac to the exhaust port helped.
Prob. 3 - nozzle - The unit that comes with it is cheap and the passages inside clog easily. I most recently upgraded to a foot pedal and larger nozzle from Bad Boy Blasters. No trouble with clogging now, plus the foot pedal puts less stress on your trigger finger.
All I have left from my original set up is the main box. The rest was hardly work buying, except to explain to others that it's not worth it, especially if you don't have a large compressor. Yeah, if you wanted to do one small part at a time (I mean, one small part a day), then you might be OK.
On a similar note, I picked up a small, used HF pressure pot blaster for free a couple of weeks ago. Having the right amount of air and clean media, I was able to blast clean 6 stock smoothies in under and hour, front and back. If you try to reuse the media, it will clog the cheap gun and valves that came with the blaster.
In either case, having the right volume of air makes all the difference.
