The Vapormatt Tiger+ processing centre - a fully automatic, in-line wet blasting, cleaning and drying system - saves time and money for users by combining several processes in one automated unit.  Vapormatt’s Tiger+ Processing Centre uses sophisticated process control and monitoring to deliver exceptional performance, helping manufacturers of cutting inserts to improve productivity and quality.

A lot of the time we hear how critical a die's success rate is for aluminium extrusion and being able to improve this becomes a key objective for those involved with die correction.

After all if your die is expected to provide kilometres of profiles then a small percentage decrease can make a big difference. However, despite die maintenance being regarded as a tedious process it is critical to ensure minimal downtime on your lines.

The weekend saw 11 boats vying for podium positions as the racing season reaches its penultimate weekend. With adrenaline levels at their usual high levels the competition was fierce amongst the boats making the spectator friendly North Beach course and added bonus for those watching. 

CVD coatings are applied at considerably high temperatures, normally between 925-1075 degrees centigrade. With the amount of energy that is required to apply the coatings can make failure at this stage an expensive mistake to correct.

With the nature of high temperature coatings, when applied to a cemented carbide surface, the process can create cooling cracks and particularly high tensile stresses; caused by the difference in the coefficients of thermal expansion between the two.

On show for the first time at this year’s EMO exhibition is the latest wet blast innovation from Vapormatt, which will help tooling manufacturers improve productivity still further.  

The problem

Wet blasting, as a process, probably brings to mind several different images of its applications and this is often the case with most people.

Having dealt with a large range of different applications from: cleaning of bowling pins, to fading of jeans and degreasing of oily parts to achieving precise surface finishes that enhance performance it is fair to say that Vapormatt have a large amount of experience with the process.

However, it had to have started somewhere.

Vapormatt has strengthened its position within the surface preparation industry and enhanced its offer for customers with the appointment of Paul Rawlinson as an Application Specialist and Sales Engineer.  Paul brings to Vapormatt more than 30 years’ experience within the industry and this will significantly assist customers in the selection and specification of equipment within the markets that he is responsible for developing: aluminium, aerospace and contract processing operations.

Today I was keen to make the case for wet blasting as an effective process for increasing the die sucess rates in your extrusion plants at the correction stage.

But, before I start have a look at the above die...

This was taken on a recent trip to a customers extrusion plant where I had the opportunity to have a look around their correction shop. As you can see there is quite transformation from untreated (left) to wet blasted (right).

As part of its ongoing development programme, Vapormatt, the leading manufacturer of wet blast systems for edge preparation, has invested in the latest precision measuring system from Alicona. The new IF-EdgeMaster is an optical 3D surface measurement system that plays a crucial role, helping Vapormatt with its ISO9001 quality control procedures and enabling the company to demonstrate to customers the repeatability and accuracy of results that are achievable from its range of