Factors to Consider in Choosing Blast Rooms
A blast room is a confined, enclosed environment with abrasive media for surface treatment or cleaning. Abrasive substances like walnut shells, grit, and sand are launched at surfaces using an air or water-driven projection system to remove rust or outdated coatings and prepare them for new applications. Abrasive blast rooms typically include a media reclamation or recovery system to reuse the used material. It can be a simple sweep-in design or a pneumatic bucket elevator-style.
Space
A blast room is a dust-free enclosure where blasting can be performed. Blast rooms can have manual blasting hoses or automatic mechanical abrasive rigs on tracks.
When blasting is finished, a media recovery and recycling system collects the leftover abrasive material that fell on the floor. These systems use sweepers, air jets or moving walls to gather the abrasive and transfer it into a recycling station where fine dust and debris are separated from high-quality steel grit abrasive that can be reused.
In addition to a recovery system, a blast room requires a dust collection system that filters the air to prevent particulate from escaping. Reverse pulse cartridge dust collectors are standard in abrasive blast rooms, providing efficient and reliable operation with minimal maintenance requirements.
Safety
An abrasive blast room offers a safe environment for an operator to operate and prevents outside air contaminants from entering the room. The enclosure also reduces the risk of exposure to hazardous materials, such as crystalline silica and asbestos, which could cause serious health issues if touched, inhaled or ingested. When the blasting is completed, any remaining media on the floor of the blast booth gets collected by a recovery system that uses sweepers, air jets or moving walls to gather the blasted material and send it through a recycling system to separate fine dust and debris from high-quality, reusable abrasive media.
Noise
The blasting process creates dust clouds that can be inhaled, so limiting employees’ exposure to these airborne particles is important. It can be done by having workers wear respiratory protection, using a blast room or simply keeping non-blasting personnel out of the area where blasting occurs. In addition, a blast room can be equipped with a recovery system that collects used blast media, sends it to a separator, and then back into the pressure pot for reuse. Other features include pneumatic crane slot doors, rubber room lining and sound-dampening materials. Blast rooms are often used to blast large items like vehicles, construction equipment and aircraft. Some are designed with drive-through configurations to allow the product to enter and exit simultaneously.
Efficiency
Blasting rust and old coatings is an efficient method of surface preparation to allow new paint to adhere. In addition, blast cleaning eliminates the need for toxic chemical stripping and minimizes environmental impact while enabling production to continue regardless of weather conditions or other factory processes. A “U”-shaped partial reclaim system adds longitudinal metered screw assemblies along the back wall of the blast room and cross screws in the floor, which reclaim 60 to 90% of the abrasive that hits the walls and floor. The abrasive is either blown or rebounded off the workpiece and strikes the sides of the room as it blasts, then falls into the screw assemblies for recovery. The system’s recovery systems — either mechanical or pneumatic — collect and transport spent media to the abrasive separator, dual adjustable air wash, vibratory screen and abrasive conveyor. These components clean the abrasive, remove dust and debris, and return the good abrasive to the pressure pot for reuse.
Customization
A dust collection system is a crucial component of your blast room. It filters the air and moves the dust outside of the blast booth, maintaining visibility for the operator and preventing particulate matter from escaping the room. A media reclaim/recovery system collects the used abrasive. It sends it to the recycling station, where it is cleaned, separated into sizes, and returned to the pressure pot for reuse. It’s a fantastic approach to reducing the expense of abrasives.
