Soda blasting machines

Hello, all. I have been hearing about a guy who blasts and strips with baking soda. I ran into him at a friend's house as he was stripping an old wooden, horse-drawn hearse. He said he could do machine tools as the baking soda is non-abrasive, just to remove surface rust from machines that have sat for years. I could take some of this stuff and it would turn to powder between my fingers. He also takes of paint, one layer at a time. Any opinions?

http://www.armex.com/

cheers,
Michael

i heard they also use crushed dry ice, blast a machine and only have paint chips left???

If you think sand blasting is messy wait until you see soda blasting. You would think that the soda will desolve quickly, it doesn't. Everything is white for a long time. I couldn't believe the mess after seeing a 55 Chevy soda blasted.

Joe

Joe

The dry ice blasting is good for things that are dusty, dirty, very mildly oily or greasy but have really complex surfaces...like fan cages or moving machinery that's draped with flexible hoses, cables, and the like.

It doesn't take off the paint as far as I can tell.

hey thats nice to know thanks mat

Plastic media blasting works nice on motorcycle frames, automobile bodies, fiberglass truck bodies.

It is striking to see something woith all the paint removed but the weld colors still present

The guy that plastic media blasted my 72 honda frame said they typically used soda for dirty greasy stuff like rear end housings...they used silica to chase rust out of pits, and ground plastic for stuff you just wanted to strip paint from.

Bill

Soda Blasting Machine...

If you think sand blasting is messy wait until you see soda blasting. You would think that the soda will desolve quickly, it doesn't. Everything is white for a long time. I couldn't believe the mess after seeing a 55 Chevy soda blasted.

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Couldn't agree more! I owned one of these Armex blasters once in the early nineties. I used it to strip aircraft. We were told that since methylene chloride removers were on the way out, this was the way of the future. I already owned a plastic media blast rig, but found it could not be used on aircraft beacuse it work hardened the skin. So we set that machine aside and we demoed the Armex machine for a month for free, then leased one. What a disaster! It seems that you can NEVER get all the baking soda out of the nooks and crannies! It slowly dissolves and the residue left behind by the water that trails out of these pockest of soda is a *perfect* release compound. It's invisible, won't wipe off easily and after painting, the paint just *falls off* of these residue run areas

I turned it in and just about that same time Eldorado Chemical of San Antonio, TX sent a salesman out to show us an enviro-friendly chemical paint remover that actually WORKED. Have been using it ever since.

Jimbo

PS

Demo'ed the dry ice blaster also: that's another nightmare for another night

Matt-
Dry ice blasting/cryocleaning seems to be versatile in terms of being able to be tailored almost precisely for the degree of cleaning or aggressiveness of coating removal for a particular application. Keep in mind that the majority of the effect comes from creating an instantaneous temperature differential between the substrate and the coating; creating shock and stress at the boundary. The "abrasive" effect is only part of the equation.

Here's a news article about how it is beginning to find ever wider use in architectural restoration and conservation practices

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=152925

Not in the least my area of responsibility, but there's a possibility I may get to see it happening on an upcoming job in a few months or so.

smt

PS: Jimbo, it would be interesting to hear the downside of your experiences with dry ice blasting, and any points of wisdom offered.

Thanks!
smt

Dry ice blasting works pretty well, if a bit slow compared to chemical stripper. The thermal fracking action is also good as a degreaser, but since that is not my business I didn't care about that. The *only problem* is the $250 per hour it costs to run the machine! (operator labor extra)You can buy a lot of manual labor for tha kind of jack! There was just NO WAY this process could be made to pay in aircraft painting. And a strip & paint of a Gulfstream size biz jet is up around $125,000! But what shop can afford to spend $15-20K (THEIR cost) taking the paint off??!! Gosh, that's near the retail value of that service!

I'm not suprised to see it used on architectural labors of love with their 'cost no object' budgets and governmnet grants to boot. I have yet to see even one aircraft paint shop using it,even though the system was developed back in the '80's specifically with them in mind, let alone anyone else in the world of real efficient business. Antique restoration does not have to be efficient.


Jimbo

Jimbo-

You are correct about public buildings, that is where I see proposals for use. OTOH, on some architectural projects, the question is, can you restore it, or what would it cost to replace/duplicate. So it is more or less a real world efficiency comparison. Again, not my area of responsibility, and no experience with cryoblast. But I do know that South American & "Eastern European Bloc" nationalities are relatively inexpensive, fanatical workers, and widely used as the manual cost control factor for any economic comparison in the construction and restoration trades.

There's also a few other factors on a construction site that would not apply in a dedicated painting facility. For instance, not only the workers using the process, but everyone else in the building have to be protected from any ancilliary effects such as fumes and OSHA or EPA mandated abatement procedures. Washdown can't necessarily be left to run to the floor for later cleanup, if it will trickle down through another 10 floors of offices, etc. Sometimes the stripping and removal processes will be going on right next to or overtop completed or NIC work that must be protected.

Don't get me started about inefficiencies in large construction projects, private or public, LOL. Sometimes I think 1/3 to 1/2 of the bid amount is really set asides for remedial work.

smt

Agree, totally!
The dry ice blasting can make certain projects possible, projects that would be IMPOSSIBLE any other way for reasons you cited and more.

That being said, it becomes a little like a hydrogen fuel cell; around for decades, they make space travel and satellite communication possible where it would probably be impossible without them. But as for the mundane task of powering an automoblie, they will probably NEVER be competitive with internal combustion since they cost 10-20X what a modern car costs.

Jimbo

Hello, all. I have been hearing about a guy who blasts and strips with baking soda. I ran into him at a friend's house as he was stripping an old wooden, horse-drawn hearse. He said he could do machine tools as the baking soda is non-abrasive, just to remove surface rust from machines that have sat for years. I could take some of this stuff and it would turn to powder between my fingers. He also takes of paint, one layer at a time. Any opinions?

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I am sure you can get solid info from these guys http://www.sodapro.com/contact.html
They've been working with Soda blasting for a long time and would answer your query.

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