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Installing a full recovery floor blast room for a mutlinational industrial gas and engineering company

Client

Undisclosed

Location

United Kingdom

Brief

Design and deliver a full recovery floor blast room.

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At our client’s site, we were informed that the dimensions of this new blast room had to fit within a strict floor plan. This facility also required ample room for operators to work comfortably and efficiently inside while utilising the most comprehensive abrasive recovery solution for their production demands, space-saving features, and soundproofing.

After assessing our client’s production requirements (they’d be using the blast booth daily, in 8-hour shifts), we opted for our most efficient abrasive recovery system for their highly demanding production requirements. The sweep abrasive air flex floor is an automated recovery system that eliminates inefficiencies associated with manual abrasive recovery.

The floor of our client’s blast room comprises pedestrian-rated, galvanised grated steel, which sits above three standard-width longitudinal recovery corridors. Each corridor houses flexible scraper blades mounted on rails, reciprocated by an electrically driven reducing gearbox and cam. Once the blast room is in operation, the blades push abrasive that has fallen through the grating to a transversal corridor and into the base of a media elevator. There, the abrasive and other particulates are separated, and the viable media is deposited into a hopper that sits above the blast machine, ready for re-use.

Due to its constant use and friability of the media, the facility had to be well-ventilated to ensure optimal visibility and safety for the operators working inside. This blast room was installed with several baffled overhead air inlets, drawing air in and down inside the enclosure without causing turbulence, and then extracted by a low-level abrasive drop-out plenum at the opposing end of the booth. These devices are not inexpensive but ensure optimal dust extraction, particularly when a booth processes abrasives with low cycles of impact. This innovative technique holds dust and particulates in atmospheric suspension. Working with gravity instead of against it, the air drawn from top inlets flows through the blast room to the inlet on the rear wall. This airflow ensures the most efficient ventilation possible, from high to low.

When dust is controlled, our designers can turn their attention to optimal LED lighting, ” There is little point in using your full beam when driving in a snowstorm.” These fixtures provide bright, white light, enabling operators to gauge their blast pattern and the overall surface finish of the component they are working on effectively.

The client’s machine shop was chosen as the location for the blast booth, with a primary focus on minimising break-out noise. To achieve this, we built the blast room using sound-insulating panels made of composite material with twin skins. These panels were designed with a layer of sound-attenuating foam at their core, effectively reducing the noise emitted from within the blast room and preventing it from spreading into the surrounding environment.

We also fitted a rail loading system inside our client’s facility to facilitate effortless manoeuvring of product in and out of the blast room. Mounted on those rails was a spinner table, allowing operators to quickly and easily rotate the product while treating it.

Our client now benefits from a fully equipped, highly optimised, and incredibly efficient blast room. Built to exact standards and maintaining a compact footprint, they can streamline their production, increasing overall turnaround times, productivity, and throughput.