To inspect dies properly, especially for smaller imperfections, dies have to be cleaned after the caustic soda dip stage.

Wet blasting is more effective at cleaning extrusion dies than other surface finishing process. There are several reasons for this:

- Wet blasting is highly effective at removing all caustic trace and residual aluminium after the caustic soda dip operation because of the abrasive action of the wet blast slurry, combined with additional degreasers and inhibitors.

Our Vapormatt Cougar + with double load ends is designed to cope with tough extrusion die cleaning operations and is extremely robust.

For maximum productivity, the double load end allows for one turntable of extrusion dies to be unloaded and loaded whilst the other turntable of dies is being wet blasted (or vapor blasted, vapour blasted, aqua blasted to give the process its other names). 

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As well as cleaning the component, removing all contaminants, wet blasting has removed all burrs and surface imperfections to create a perfectly clean surface to the specific Ra surface roughness tolerance specified by our customer.

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The industry gold standard finishing machine for the cutting tool insert industry has been installed at a leading manufacturer of cutting tool inserts with a full pallet conveyor to help boost operator productivity.

On the back of our Vapormatt Promise, we took a lot of care to ensure the new machine works to the precise specification agreed with the customer. We achieved this via our Factory Acceptance Test before the machine left us and a further Site Acceptance Test once the machine was installed at the customer’s premises. Both tests were signed off by the customer.