Dry ice blasting nozzles

I'm looking for a place to get prices on dry ice blasting nozzles. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

How about a manufacturer who makes the blasting equipment?

Sorry I know this seems obvious but this is a very specialized piece of equipment and you aren't going to find this at McMaster Carr or any other general purpose industrial supplier (MSC, KBC, J&L, etc).

I guess I'm also asking why not net-search this information? It does seem a little obscure for this type of forum....

I guess I'm also asking why not net-search this information? It does seem a little obscure for this type of forum....

Click to expand...

Likely b/c there have been numorous articals aboot this subject in the trade journals in the last yr. He prolly assumes someone has some first hand knowledge as it is usually marketed towards cleaning machinery.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I hope you have an independent breathing source too as CO2 will rob ambient oxygen.

I saw some of the dry-ice blasting equipment on demo at EASTEC the past two years. Pretty impressive. They had a rusty old I-beam outside one of the buildings and you could try it out. Very 'clean'. No grit from the media... it goes straight to gas via sublimation. Of course there is all the rust you just blasted off.

Inside they had more of the setup. A machine for making cakes and pellets that the blasting equipment could use. Very cute booth-bunny too

In any case... it is not just some sandblaster that one feeds crushed up dry-ice to. Very specialized equipment from what I could see. You still need to wear full (and I mean FULL) protective gear. Even though the handle of the blaster has some thick insulation you will need some very well insulated mitts. The cold freezes up everything. Main advantage I can see over grit based media is there is no cloud grit drifting downwind from the site getting on (and in) everyone and everything. As I said above there is still the problem of the crap that is blasted off. In a cabinet the dis-advantage to using dry-ice media is that you keep having to make or buy dry-ice. You can't recycle it in existing cabinets.

-DU-

i saw\a prog on discovery channel about telescopes, they were cleaning the mirrors with this kind of kit, is the nozzle tungsten carbide or ceramic or just steel as theres no abrasive media?
mark

Mark,

I don't know, but I will ask when I go to EASTEC this year. They may tell me that it is 'unobtainium.' When I had a sandblaster cabinet the ceramic nozzle would wear out pretty quick. The carbide ones cost about six times as much.

-DU-

Good question.

Aparently it's abrasive enough to doo the job eh?


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I am Ox and I approve this here post!

Can't help you with the nozzle but I can attest that dry ice blasting does a fine job.

At a past job, about 10 years ago, we used it to clean the build up of mold release from tooling we used to produce SRIM (structural reaction injection molding) parts.

Was was amazing is how, if you kept your distance a bit, flimsy plastic faces on controls could be cleaned w/o damage.

Of course, getting too close would, would take the faces off.

Breathing in a normal factory setting was never an issue. I'd be concerned in a closed room.

Clutch

We have a couple Cooljets in the plastics factory where I work. The injection guys use it everyday on cleaning there molds. It works great and does no damage in getting the PET plastic out.

My area uses the smaller one for cleaning labelers with glue build-up. They do a great job, but are pricey, noisy, and suck-up air.

As for nozzles, ours are anodized aluminum. I have called Cooljet for parts, and would think the parts were fabricated on another planet. They are WAY over priced for replacement parts. They wanted 800 bucks for a 15 ft hose assembly. We built our own for 100. All ather parts are simply a few air logic blocks from Clipard and some relief valves.

-Luke