Guyson International has recently installed four Guyson Euroblast 8, pressure feed, blast finishing systems complete with side loading turntables, into the brand new additive manufacturing (AM) factory of Materials Solutions (a Siemens Business) to remove semi-sintered particles from their components and provide an even cosmetic finish. These larger blast finishing systems augment an existing batch of smaller model 2 and model 4 Guyson Euroblast blast cabinets and continue the customer's long term association with Guyson as the foremost industrial finishing equipment manufacturer.

"Materials Solutions has been using Guyson blasters since our origin and when it came to upgrade and update it made perfect sense to us to go back to Guyson", says General Manager Phil Hatherley. "We have increased size capability plus capacity and working with our team Guyson have provided us with a quality solution for blasting the larger components that our customers are now looking for us to supply."

The installation of these blast systems has been purposely designed so that each system practically mirrors itself, with operators working back to back in a compact and organised space and all the dust collectors and cyclone reclamators are on a common side of the installation.

The Guyson Euroblast 8 blast cabinet was chosen as it offers a tremendous array of component access options, offering front, front top and side opening doors and providing internal blast chamber dimensions of 1050 mm (w) x 1050 mm (d) x 880 mm (h). So the largest additive manufactured components can be accommodated.

In addition, each cabinet is fitted with a side loading turntable, allowing heavy/bulky components to be loaded outside the blast cabinet via forklift or crane if necessary. The turntable (with a max 300 kg evenly distributed load) is manually moved into the blast cabinet on rails and metal bogey wheels. And once the turntable is within the blast chamber an external scissor lift, on the side loading frame, allows the load table rails to be lowered, allowing the cabinet side door to be closed, creating a tight seal, to prevent dust and blast media escaping into the workshop environment during post process blasting. Electrically operated door switches prevent accidental blasting when the door is open and a timed interlock prevents operator access, for a pre-determined time, after blasting ceases to allow dust to be evacuated to the dust collection unit.

During blasting of AM parts, externally mounted fluorescent lighting and additional interior bulkhead lights ensures excellent observation and visibility through an angled, toughened glass, viewing window protected by fine mesh gauze and fitted with quick change anti-frost sheet. A nozzle holding bracket gives the operator the choice of either holding the blast nozzle and moving it around the component or placing the pressure blast nozzle in the bracket leaving both hands free for moving the component around under the blast stream. A floating foot pedal is provided for blast nozzle operation offering convenient and comfortable foot positioning for each operator.

The whole Guyson blast system is completed with a blast media delivery/extraction system comprising of a Guyson model CY600/12 Cyclone Reclamator, G55 Pressure Pot and C800 Dust Collector.

The 55 litre pressure pot generates the blast stream (up to four times faster than suction feed) from the pressure vessel into the cabinet through heavy duty hose to the blast nozzle and when the floating foot pedal is depressed it pressurises the pot and starts the blast operation; similarly releasing the pedal de-pressurises the pot and stops the process.

The blast media then passes out of the cabinet hopper into the cyclone reclamator which separates out re-usable media from the dust, blast debris and undersize media to improve the consistency of finish and extracts the dust and fines off to the model C800 cartridge filter dust collection unit, whilst the heavier re-usable blast media flows back to the pressure pot.