SPECIAL MEDIA BLASTING WITH BLAST IT CLEAN
Due to health concerns, traditional sandblasting is no longer applicable. However, Blast It Clean offers alternative special media blasting options to fulfill your sandblasting needs. With all of these alternatives that are now available, we can now cater to any environment that we are working in. Most special media we use is environmentally friendly which makes the debris biodegradable after blasting.
DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPECIAL MEDIA BLASTING
WALNUT SHELL
Certain projects require a softer, less abrasive material that can still deliver the desired result without damaging the substrate. Crushed walnut shells offer a softer blasting alternative that is also economically friendly. Walnut shells are lightweight and angular which will effectively remove coatings while leaving what is underneath it, such as wood, intact and unharmed.
Applications
- Stripping and cleaning of castings and moldings
- Cleaning of metallic surfaces on boats, bridges, and buildings
- Stripping coating from log cabins, homes, and other log structures
- delicate or deteriorating surfaces such as structures with retained moisture
CRUSHED GLASS
Crushed glass is made of 100% recycled bottle glass. It's a good general-purpose abrasive - it's economical, eco and operator-friendly, and offers many advantages over traditional abrasives. Crushed glass works great in slurry, vapor, dustless, and dry-blast equipment. Crushed glass is classified as a semi-hard abrasive. It's aggressive enough to remove many coatings and paints, and if it makes sense for the project, it can also be used on fiberglass boat bottoms, some wood materials, commercial masonry, and other sensitive substrates that rougher abrasives would ruin.
Applications
- Paint stripping, coating removal, graffiti removal
- Commercial restoration, equipment maintenance, log homes, boat bottoms, and pool cleaning
- Fire damage restoration
CORN COBB
Corn Cobb media is hard as iron but soft on most surfaces. It's 100% organic and biodegradable, so it's one of our most environmentally friendly media for blasting. We will typically use this type of media for wood and most organic surfaces. It is also absorbent, doesn't cause sparks, if recycled it can be reused, won't harm any gears or bearings, and produces less dust than most standard media, making it more efficient, lessening the use of containment staging.
Applications
- Smoke-damaged buildings, multiple-layered paint, or enameled surfaces, wherever aggressive building-interior clean-up is needed.
- Structural steel (before painting), machinery, heavy equipment, wood-frame buildings. Motors, generators, electrical substations, insulations, forms and molds, fiberglass boat hulls, industrial building, printing presses, cartridge polishing, and removing flashing from metal and plastic parts.
- For delicate cleaning requirements and microblasting.
GARNET
Garnet is a media that cleans the deeper cavities and areas down to the bare surface. It has the capability to remove all rust, soluble salts, molds, residue build-up, and other contaminants. It's ideal for steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and other substrates.
Applications
- Ship-building and repair, pipe racks and pipelines, and offshore platforms.
- storage tanks, and confined space cleaning. The low dust makes garnet good for blast-room projects as well.
- Vapor and wet blasting can be combined with garnet abrasives to also assist with low dust and efficiency.
ALUMINUM OXIDE
Aluminum oxide is an effective abrasive for etching and finishing. It is an aggressive material so it is usually used on metal and glass. It comes in different grits much like Black Beauty coal slag and it can even be recycled, making it eco-friendly can use it over and over again until it begins to break down. Depending on the material and the pressure you are blasting is how quickly it will degrade.
Applications
- Abrasive blasting, surface preparation including etching to coating adhesion, and paint stripping.
- Lapping, no-skid, refractory coating, and decorative surface prep.
SPECIAL MEDIA BLASTING IN ACTION
Blast It Clean utilizes special media blasting quite often, especially when blasting lacquer and failing protective coatings from wood structures. There are different uses of specialty media, but all projects are engineered specifically for the client.
Every project has a certain outcome that a client desires. There are special surfaces that need special treatment. That is where special media blasting comes in. The climate also plays a huge part in planning a project with special media. Elements like people, food processing, hazardous material, trees, shrubs, etc.