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USDA Glass Beading Stainless Steel

We make custom Food Process Equipment and are adding a bay for glass beading 304 stainless steel. We will be blasting frameworks and weldments of tube and pipe, no sheet metal. I am looking for some general information on media size, nozzle size, and pressure required. This equipment needs to meet USDA requirements for surface finish. I have roughly 65 scfm @ 125 psi available.

Todd Belz
Hughes Company - Columbus, WI USA
2000

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2000

For serious blasting, 65 CFM is not enough. You will be stopping and starting regularly to keep the air pressure up.

A siphon cabinet uses less air, but is slower, a lot slower. The equipment is also cheaper, so you have some management decisions to make.

The faster equipment is a pressure rig.

The glass bead size will depend on what you are trying to do. The smaller the bead the smoother the surface will be. There is a practical limit on size in a siphon cabinet.

Whoever you buy your media from should be able to give you literature or show you samples.

You should be able to do a search and find sites that sell glass bead and have some information.

Look up the Abrasive Engineering Society in Butler, PA. They might have appropriate information for free or for sale.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida

Don't forget to passivate the stainless after blasting. If you reuse the media, you will be reintroducing contamination to the surface. The FDA is conducting some tests concerning the microbiological effects of various surface treatments. I would be happy to discuss this with you.

Dan Weaver
- Toccoa, Georgia
2000