A leading US aluminium window and door manufacturer was cleaning at that volume using dry blasting. The process was labour-intensive, inconsistent, and left operators waiting for dies to dry before they could even start. Micro-cracks were harder to spot. Polishing took longer. And every die that failed in the press meant downtime they couldn't afford.
They installed a Vapormatt Cougar+ wet blasting machine.
The change was immediate. Because wet blasting processes dies straight from the caustic rinse, the drying wait disappeared entirely. The water-cushioned abrasive polishes the bearing face without altering die geometry. Caustic trace removal improved, which meant better nitride coating adhesion downstream. Micro-cracks became easier to identify because the process produces a consistently fine-grained surface.
The result: longer die life, fewer pulled dies, reduced polishing time, and a cleaner, safer working environment.
This is not a process improvement at the margins. At 240 dies a day, reducing failure rates and cutting inspection time changes the economics of the whole die shop.
Vapormatt has been engineering wet blasting machines specifically for extrusion die shops for decades. The Cougar+ handles a 1,000kg turntable load and can be configured with double load ends to process up to 200 dies per shift.
Want to know what the numbers look like for your operation? We have a calculator built for exactly that conversation.
Read the full case study or contact us to run the ROI calculation for your die shop.
