Advantages of high-quality blades:

• Precision cutting
• Smooth surface finish
• Extended blade life
• Reduced material waste
• Faster cutting speeds
• Lower energy consumption
• Less downtime
• Versatility
• Reduced vibration
• Consistency
• Minimised heat generation
• Safter operation

How wet blasting can help produce them:

Wet blasting cleans steel wire leaving a uniform surface that is entirely free from graphite, oxides, scale and other contaminants in preparation for forming, machining and heat treatment.

Clean and uniform steel wire is a better conductor, more resistant to corrosion, stronger and safer.

High quality aluminium wire needs to be clean and free from imperfections. Wet blasting cleans the surface removing all contaminants and oxides, leaving feeder wire perfectly clean for extrusion.

It also produces a smoother surface finish by cushioning the impact of the abrasive particles with water. This reduces the risk of surface damage and results in a more uniform finish free from imperfections and that is better for extrusion because…

Power cable needs to transmit electricity over large distances as efficiently as possible to help reduce running costs.

And cables operating at lower temperatures transmit power more efficiently because a cooler cable has lower resistance.

The non-specular finish created by wet blasting power cable increases emissivity to approx. 0.8 - untreated cable is approx. 0.5.

Our unique Profelis automatic wet blasting machine is specifically designed for the surface finishing of wire and cable products.

At the heart of the Profelis is a specially designed gun manifold. 4 powerful blast guns are located at 90-degree angles to give complete 360-degree finishing.

This highly effective configuration can be boosted further by specifying 8 blast guns located at 45-degree angles for maximum productivity.

The versatile machine is capable of processing wire 1mm (0.04") in diameter all the way up to cable 54mm (2.13") in diameter.

The forging process for components like landing gear struts and beams often results in the presence of heat scale and oxidation on the component’s surface, this is also the case for components manufactured by other thermal processes.

In a single efficient operation, wet blasting removes all heat scale, oxidation, machining marks, and other contaminants, cleans the component, and applies the required uniform surface finish to meet stringent aerospace industry standards.

Wet blasting is highly effective at removing casting resist, burrs and other contaminants from the surfaces of fan and turbine blades, blisks, drive shafts, nozzle guide vanes, titanium engine casings and other components manufactured by investment casting.

In addition to cleaning components, the process can also apply the final surface finish required, or prepare the component for the next surface finishing stage.

PVD or CVD coating fan blades has two important affects. First, it maintains the surface finish of the blade for much longer by significantly reducing wear. Second, coatings make the surface finish smoother for better fuel efficiency.

Aerospace engine components operate in extreme conditions, so the bond strength of coatings like PVD and CVD needs to be maximised.

We’ve just finished our Factory Acceptance Test (FAT) on a large automatic Leopard Horizontal wet blasting machine destined for a leading aerospace MRO operation in the Middle East.

This machine is capable or processing all sorts of large aerospace components (e.g. large wheels, fan blades, fan discs, etc.) for MRO related applications like preparation for NDT crack detection.