Dry ice blasting???

Does anyone here own a dry ice blaster? I am looking into them vs sand blasting. But i am curious as to the price, I dont see prices for them online.

I have not used dry ice blasting, but if you need a very gentle, non destructive blasting, I had good results with soda-blasting.I would think the equipped is much cheaper too.

A military facility here uses corn starch for some paint removal on aircraft/helo parts. Gentle on the aluminum parts. Years ago I remember reading about a company using dry ice to remove paint from airplanes.

Dry ice comes into its own on more greasy - rubbery coatings, were the cold helps make them brittle - easier to chip off. Can' see it as a advantage on taking paint off of anything, but cleaning a greasy inky printing press works real well, especially when you can't have grit contaminate anything!

I would think that dry ice blasting would also be useful if you are trying to reduce the amount of material needed to be disposed of as hazardous waste (ie bottom paint on a boat).
You would have just the blasted off material, not the blasting media.

Rick

Baking soda can use regular sandblast equipment. In addition the media can be used on aluminum without much damage. Also with a water rinse the only residue is what ever you removed.

We had one we used on our printing presses.Did a real nice job on greasy caked up coating as previously mentioned.Ours kept seizing up the bronze mixing wheel and the printing department didn't want to spend the money to maintain it,so we scrapped it.We put a 40 Hp Sullair screw compressor on a wheel cart to power it.The dry ice pellets were pretty expensive also.In the hands of an idiot it can abrade some delicate parts.It was very expensive to run but when used as intended it does the nicest clean up of any machine.

I meant to add we also bought an $8k soda blaster that we never used.I haven't seen it in a few years so it either got scrapped or is storage somewhere.I think they were worried about the air borne mess it might make using it in the press room.

We just invested in a couple of Dry Ice Blast cleaning machines, if you guys haven't seen this process used on machine tools you have to see it in action, it is a pretty amazing cleaning process for cleaning machine tools!! Here is a link to us cleaning the inside cover from the belt area on a very dirty Clausing lathe with about an 1/8" of hard tar like dried gears from forty years worth of use.

Dropbox - 217-2-14 22.16.26.mp4

zgoo said:

We just invested in a couple of Dry Ice Blast cleaning machines, if you guys haven't seen this process used on machine tools you have to see it in action, it is a pretty amazing cleaning process for cleaning machine tools!! Here is a link to us cleaning the inside cover from the belt area on a very dirty Clausing lathe with about an 1/8" of hard tar like dried gears from forty years worth of use.

Dropbox - 217-2-14 22.16.26.mp4

Click to expand...

What machines did you invest in?

These guys lead the pack in dry ice blasting machine equipment.

Dry Ice Blasting Equipment and Machines by Cold Jet

I have bought 2 cold Jet machines 1 for AKRA Plastics, 1 for Philips. The first worked wonders on a 64 cav. LIM mold, for Beckton Dickenson. It made almost 3 million parts a week and we couldn't run it enough. I brought in a Cold Jet that used 3mm (rice) Co2 to clean this tool without removing it from the machine. This tool would have to be pulled every month for a complete cleaning which took 5 days. It wasn't a complete success, but we gained 2 days of run time between maintenance.

The second one was for Philips. It was used for cleaning laser treated anodes. This one worked well for the job. It completely knocked off the stuff it needed to knock off without adding anything. This machine shaved 4x4x12 inch blocks of Co2 to create the blast media. It worked good. But...

Since the solids completely sublimate as the "sand" impacts a surface it leaves nothing behind. That is what this system is really for... It's very clean. It isn't the last word in power. It isn't cheap to use. It's clean. But it's also very cold, so and there may some problems here. If your air isnt completely dry the machine can clog from ambient air. Also a freshly cleaned part gather water from the ambient in condensation. If you are cleaning metal parts that can't get wet, this may not be fore you. And this won't matter how dry you air is.

You will need volume not PSI. If you are using this thing remotely, you are gonna need a bada$$ diesel compressor. At Philps I used HVLP Nitrogen. Worked killer.

They are wonderful, but the first machine i bought was $18k, the second was much cheaper and used. I rebuilt most of it and made a semi automatic machine.

You need to buy and store Co2. A 3x3x4.5 insulated box will last about a week if kept indoors, in a cool area. Storing Co2 isnt easy. You need to have it in a well ventilated space. If you put one of these storage boxes near a man pit on a service station, theoretically the gas could escape and fill the pit with Co2. This is just a simple example. All I'm saying is Co2 is heavier than air and will push the air out of the way in a depression leaving that area without oxygen. Oh, and then there's Co2 bombs. Look it up on YouTube... even your best man will do that at least once! I have a story about that

The Rep. In California was Ben Shepard. Pretty smart guy. He helps design parts, nozzles etc. for the machines. Nozzle selection is an art form. You will want to try a few out before you commit. They aren't cheap