A self-contained blast-room with an internal volume approaching 2000m³ and a high-capacity media recycling system has been completed by Hodge Clemco for one of the UK’s leading industrial painting contractors.
The blast-room, one of the biggest ever built by Hodge Clemco, is part of a £1.5 million investment by the Jack Tighe Group at its Scunthorpe premises and enables it to considerably increase the size and weight of structures and components that can be processed there. The room measures 30m long x 8m wide x 8m high and can accept loads up to 40 tonnes. Double doors at one end provide a 7m x 7m opening.
The walls and roof of the room are constructed from prefabricated mild steel panels that are covered with full-height rubber curtains. The concrete floor of the building is protected with steel plate in order to retain a smooth, safe surface. As well as the main loading doors, two personnel doors have been fitted, all of which are interlocked with the blasting system to prevent it being used if one is open.
Abrasive is recovered by means of a sweep-in hopper, a bucket elevator and a cleaner/separator that delivers clean graded material to a 10-tonne-capacity hopper designed to feed up to four blast machines and allow approximately ten hours of blasting. The cleaner/separator removes fines, dust and over-size contaminants, which are then delivered automatically to bins for disposal. The equipment can be adjusted to ensure only suitable abrasive is re-used.
The use of a sweep-in hopper has avoided the cost and disruption of civil engineering work that would have been required for other designs. Hodge Clemco also reduced costs by designing the room to integrate with the customer’s own dust extraction, air supply and dust collection equipment.
The same abrasive recovery system was also retro-fitted by Hodge Clemco to an existing blast room at the premises. Both installations have self-contained control systems that include isolator switches, interlocked stop/start buttons, indicator lamps and automatic cut-outs when storage hoppers are full. The systems can be purged quickly, if the type of abrasive being used needs to be changed.

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