How is Operator Technique Affecting Blasting Results?

Most of the time, the abrasive blasting process is handled manually with versatile equipment that can be used for various applications. Therefore, some basic process parameters must be set carefully in order to achieve desirable results.

Here are many factors that can affect the blasting result. Besides common factors such as the abrasive media, blasting nozzle, media velocity, and compressor air, one of the factors that may easily be ignored by us, that’s the operator technique.

In this article, you will learn the different variables of a technique that could impact the results of the abrasive blasting application:

Blasting distance from the workpiece: When the blast nozzle moves away from the workpiece, the media stream will become wide, while the velocity of the media impacting the workpiece decreases. So operator should control well on blasting distance from the workpiece.

Blast Pattern: The blast pattern can be wide or tight, which is determined by the design of the nozzle. If you want to achieve max productivity on large surfaces, operators should choose the wide blast pattern. When meeting spot blasting and precise blasting applications such as parts cleaning, stone carving, and weld seam grinding, a tight blast pattern is better.

The angle of impact: There is a greater impact for the media form impacting perpendicularly on the work piece than the ones impacting at a certain angle. Furthermore, angular blasting can result in non-uniform stream patterns, where some regions of the pattern have a greater impact than others.

Blasting Path: The blasting path used by the operator to expose the part surface to the flow of abrasive media has a significant impact on overall process performance. The poor blasting technique can severely impact process performance by increasing the overall process time, thereby increasing the labor cost, raw material cost (media consumption), maintenance cost (system wear), or rejection rate cost by damaging the workpiece surface.

Time Spent on Area: The speed at which the blasting stream is moving across the surface, or similarly, the number of channels or blasting path, are all factors that affect the number of media particles hitting the workpiece. The amount of media impacting the surface increases at the same rate as the time or channel spent on the area increases.