The technical challenge
Honing and pre/post treatments are not a cleaning operation, they are precision surface treatments that add significant value to your parts. Every cycle must deliver within a tolerance tight enough to guarantee coating adhesion and cutting performance. Even a 3% scrap rate over 10,000 pieces cannot be justified.
Process control and consistency
The Jaguar runs eight blast guns across a multi-axis system, with the cassette indexing through the X-axis whilst the blast head operates across Y and Z. Gun crown angles are pre-set between 45° and 80°. Slurry pressure control keeps blast energy consistent from the first pallet to the last. The optional patented elutriation tower continuously removes broken media, so media quality does not erode over a production run. Blast airflow monitoring ensures even processing from each gun.
The Jaguar processes up to six pallets per cycle at approximately 4 minutes per pallet, per side. Recipes are stored, coded, and recalled by component type, so repeat production runs start where the last one finished.
Why Vapormatt
We invented wet blasting and have supplied insert finishing systems to carbide producers across the globe. No competitor brings that depth of application knowledge to a machine with this capacity.
- Decades of insert application knowledge: from the first automated edge honing machines in the 1980s to the Jaguar today, our process recipes are proven across global insert production at every scale.
- High-capacity, sustained precision: built to process at volume continuously, the Jaguar maintains ±5 µm edge radius tolerance across extended production runs without process drift.
- Designed for uptime: large maintenance doors, spacious cabinet, externally mounted components to keep critical bearing areas protected and reduce intervention time when servicing is needed.
The Vapormatt Promise: the machine meets the agreed specification, or we make it right.
The bottom line
The Jaguar is the proven choice for carbide insert producers who need more capacity and tighter process accountability than traditional turntable options. A machine that cannot hold consistency cannot hold tolerances; without that control, scrap rates climb and performance cannot be guaranteed. The Jaguar closes that gap.
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Specification |
|---|---|
| Blast cabinet floor area | 6.98 x 2.3 x 3.02m high (275" x 91" x 119" high), including filtration |
| Slurry system | 2 Vapormatt vortex slurry pumps; closed-loop pressure control; polyurethane pumping elements |
| Electrical supply | 400/480V, 3 phase, 50/60 Hz, 36 amp |
| Process air supply | 6-7 bar (90-100 psi); 5.6 Nm³/min (209 SCFM) for 8 guns |
| Water supply | 2-4 bar (30-60 psi); 13 L/min (3 gpm) intermittent |
| Sound attenuation | Internal sound reduction panels and sound-deadening maintenance doors; operational noise specifiable to 75 dBA |
| Vertical gun head manipulator | 200mm (7.9") Z-axis stroke, ±0.5mm accuracy (optional) |
| Load/unload cell | Shuttle system with safety cage for continual pallet loading during production (optional) |
| Blast airflow monitoring | Per-gun fault detection for air jet or hose failure (optional) |
Full technical specifications are available in the downloadable Jaguar machine brochure