Helpful Hints: Determining When to Change Wet Blasting Media
When is Necessary?
Especially in a wet system, when media fractures and becomes smaller, the particles do not have enough mass to perform any etching or cleaning work. The following method may be used to determine if wet blasting media is worn out to the point that it must be dumped and new material added to the system.
Cleaning Test Method
- Take a part that you finish in the system on a regular basis and blast it when the media is new, noting the completion time using your best operator.
- Time another part after one, two, and four hours of blasting.When the time to clean the part increases by 20%, consider dumping the media.
- Establish this number of hours as your standard, since labor is much more expensive than the media, this should be your guideline.
- Balance this against the time to dump and reset the machine.
- Remember that the machine need not be completely clean to introduce new material.