Maximizing efficiency in production processes is essential to a business’s competitiveness and ability to meet customer demands. With these goals in mind, companies can benefit from incorporating blast rooms into their operations.
These self-contained blasting environments streamline surface preparation and cleaning operations, saving businesses time and money while delivering consistent quality results. Several factors impact how well a particular blast room performs.
Safety Features
Traditionally, abrasive blasting processes have been used for surface preparation, cleaning, and coating removal in the automotive, construction, aerospace, and marine industries. These processes have faced various challenges, including waste management, containment, and environmental impacts.
These issues have been resolved by the emergence of containerized blast rooms like Airblast AFC blast room, self-contained units that provide the same benefits as traditional abrasive blasting but in an environmentally responsible and cost-efficient package.
The critical component of a containerized blast room is the blast pot, a pressurized vessel that combines air with abrasive media and propels it into a blast hose. The blast pot has an air filtration system to reduce dust emissions and ensure operator safety.
Modern container blast rooms are also equipped with a media reclamation system, which captures the used blasted media and repurposes it for future use. This significantly reduces the amount of abrasive media tracked into other areas and minimizes environmental impact.
Flexibility
Traditional abrasive blasting processes are a standard solution for surface preparation, cleaning, and coating removal in industrial applications. However, they often face several safety, efficiency, and environmental responsibility challenges. This has led to the development of container blast rooms, an innovative alternative combining traditional abrasive blasting with improved flexibility and portability.
A containerized blast room is a watertight blast booth built within a standard shipping container that houses a blast pot, blast media reclamation system, dust collection system, and other equipment. They are ideal for companies with smaller sandblasting operations that need more space for a larger blast room.
The blast room’s ventilation system uses inlet air plenum louvers spread evenly across the top of the blast chamber roof. This is in contrast to traditional blast rooms, where the plenum is commonly located towards the front or entry area of the blast chamber.
Media Reclamation
A blast room and associated abrasive recovery system are a must for any abrasive media application. It reclaims and recycles the used abrasive media for reuse in a cyclical process. This allows for clean ambient air and a more efficient machine by reducing the amount of media consumed.
Manual abrasive recovery systems typically have the feed hopper located inside the blast booth, which reduces operator fatigue by not requiring shoveling of waste media from the floor. The abrasive is swept into the feed hopper and transferred to an abrasive separator, separating the goods from the waste and returning the reusable media to the blast pot while cleaning out large pieces of scrap or debris for disposal.
For more extensive operations, a pit-mounted recovery system is available. This method eliminates the need for large hinged doors that take up a lot of valuable space in a blast room and require a large area for the pit.
Relocation
The ability to quickly relocate blast rooms from one location to another offers significant cost savings by eliminating the need for surface treatment outsourcing. Additionally, the self-contained nature of these blasting enclosures supports sustainable practices and ensures quality standards are maintained regardless of project location.
Blast rooms are built inside a modified shipping container and contain a blast pot, 3.5 cuft blast machine, dust collector, shovel-in hopper for grit recycling, and personnel access door. The blast pot holds the pressurized abrasive media while compressed air connected to it forcibly propels it into a blast hose, where the operator abrades surfaces by manipulating the nozzle.
The resulting waste is collected by the dust collector and recycled for future use. This advanced filtration system reduces airborne contaminants, which improves worker health and safety while minimizing environmental impact. For even greater efficiency, blast room manufacturers can upgrade the system to accommodate multiple types of abrasive media, including steel grit, aluminum oxide, glass beads, and chilled iron grit.
