That is what one major jet engine manufacturer achieved when they replaced their manual wet blasting operation with a Vapormatt Leopard Cub for NDT preparation of stage one compressor hubs.
The problem with manual preparation is not just the time. It's the consistency. Each fir tree slot on a compressor disc has to be blasted at every angle, ten times per angle, for exactly the right duration. One experienced operator was using a windscreen wiper blade on a manual wet blasting machine as a metronome to time how long he blasted each angle of every slot. Even then, the process was vulnerable to fatigue and human error, and every hub had to be thoroughly inspected after blasting to check the job was done. Difficult, when the fine novaculite media makes it visually hard to tell whether a surface has been blasted at all.
It also carries serious financial stakes. These hubs cost at least $50,000 each, and the maintenance specification only allows the same area to be processed twice before the part is scrapped.
The Leopard Cub removes that risk entirely. It runs a patented micro blast gun that can position to within 0.5mm increments, reaching every individual angle within each fir tree slot with a precision no manual operator can match. A standard MK3 gun handles the larger surface areas. A multi-axis robot combined with the machine's turntable means every part of the hub is blasted for precisely the correct time and intensity, every cycle, without anyone visually checking it mid-process.
Critically, the blast consistency itself does not drift. Vapormatt's technology keeps slurry concentration and blast flow constant year after year, even as internal components wear, because in an automatic machine there is no operator to notice and compensate for variation.
The result is 20 minutes per hub instead of three hours, zero human error, and full traceability on every parameter.
For a safety-critical component that cannot afford a missed indication or an unnecessary scrap, that is exactly what NDT preparation should look like.
Learn more about the benefits of Aerospace MRO by wet blasting.
