What we do ...
Blastrite is a family-owned and -managed manufacturer and distributor of granular abrasive commodities. To this end, Blastrite owns four mineral processing facilities in South Africa as well as sales and distribution infrastructures in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg.
Beyond abrasives materials, Blastrite enjoys agency and distribution agreements with class leading equipment producers, including:
- NLB (HP & UHP)
- Omax (water jet cutting tables)
- Graco (paint equipment)
Equipment
Blastrite stocks a large range of equipment from leading manufacturers across the globe. These include:
- Grit blasting equipment and consumables, including LED blasting lights
- Mechanical descaling equipment, such as needle descalers, bristle blasters and chain descalers
- Inspection equipment
- Compressed air after coolers
- Abrasive blasting equipment
- Airless painting equipment from Graco
- Airspray pressurised pots and guns
- Blast cabinets
- Suction guns
- Pneumatic vacuum drums
- Fine finish spray guns
- Blasting and painting personal protection equipment (PPE)
- Ventilation equipment
Surface preparation methods
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Method
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Result
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Blast cleaning
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Ideal
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Mechanical wire brushing
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Risk of polishing
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Mechanical disc-sanding
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Some risk of polishing
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Needle chipping
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Some risk of indentations
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Mechanical rust chipping
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Not good
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Mechanical scraping (air powered)
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Good combined with other methods
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Hand brushing
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Poor
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Hand scraping
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Only to be used in combination with other methods
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Water jetting including ultra high pressure water jetting
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Very good but with risk of flash rusting
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Electrolytic descaling
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Salt water tanks only. For removal of rust scale only, not paint
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Surface preparation
The success or failure of a paint system rides on the standard of the surface's preparation. The best paint or coating can fail on a poorly prepared surface. And the simplest and cheapest paint can perform better than expected on a well-prepared surface.
What should a good surface preparation provide?
- A clean substrate, free from impurities
- Sufficient surface roughness to give a good anchor pattern for the coating
- A surface that can be easily wetted by the selected paint
- A substrate without sharp edges so that a uniform film thickness can be obtained all over
Pre-treatment in surface prep
Studies show that pre-treatment before coating application is the single most decisive factor impacting lifetime (and thus cost-effectiveness). Poorly pre-treated surfaces with contaimination and insufficient blast cleaning result in reduced coating adhesion, blister formation and ultimately corrosion under the coating.
The following pre-treatments are available:
- degreasing and cleaning
- blast cleaning and shop-priming
- power tool cleaning
- high pressure waterjetting
- steelwork (pre-blasting preparation) that affects surface quality, including weld quality, grinding or rounding off sharp edges