Blasting Blog

bctilghman "The author, for thirty years, has concerned himself in a process that had an indifferent beginning, a somewhat unfortunate history, and yet a process of singularly technical brilliance - in some directions not sufficiently appreciated. This is a process that can produce work of inimitable artistry and of great delicacy, a process

steel-grit-blog There is a common phrase that size does not matter. In the case of sizing abrasives for a particular application size certainly does matter and plays an important role in the cost and economics of a blast cleaning operation.

In abrasive blasting the rule of thumb is to use the smallest possible abrasive to achieve the job of cleaning the part and leaving the required profile or surface finish. When buying abrasive it is human nature to assume that bigger is better and if a bigger abrasive is bought it is going to break down into a smaller size anyway so it must make sense to buy as big as possible.

dust collector explosion-1 Photo source - http://www.csb.gov/

This is a subject that does not, although it should, get much attention,dust explosions. In any industry where there are large amounts of dust present, either in the air or in the machinery being used, there is a potential for an explosion.

Surprisingly even the most innocuous of dusts can become combustible and explosive when in high enough concentrations in the surrounding air under the right (or wrong) conditions. Even dust produced from solid materials, which in solid form do not burn, such as iron, steel and aluminum can become explosive in a dust form. Who would imagine sugar or flour mills are particularly susceptible and highly volatile environments for dust explosions. Several years ago in the USA there were a series of explosions in such factories and dust collectors resulting in loss of life and substantial property damage. Some of these explosions were truly catastrophic and resulted in raising to the ground complete factories. Since then many governmental regulations, standards, laws and recommendations have been implemented to try to prevent future occurrences.

tdf dust collector blast room

Once, when we were a blasting and painting contractor, we faced many many problems with dust from our blastroom and wheel blast machines. Our neighbours continually complained about us and reported us to the environmental authorities. We faced numerous quality issues with dust sticking to the surfaces of freshly painted parts, resulting in lots of qc rejections.

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