Applications

Acrylic blast media is the softest available, and is used in a number of areas where there is a need to remove dirt and paint from delicate thin sheet composites and exotic materials. It can be used on fibreglass, carbon-graphite and other resin based components with out causing damage. For this reason it has been adopted widely by the aerospace industry for the removal of paint from an aircraft's fuselage, and cleaning of parts prior to inspection.

It has been proven to be cheaper to use, and produces less toxic waste, than chemical stripping. Research on behalf of the US Airforce demonstrated a saving of $915,000 per annum when using plastic media compared to chemical stripping. For more information click here.

Specifications:
US Type V Acrylic (Thermoplastic)
Hardness: 3.2-3.5 Mohs (46-51 Barcol)
Sizes Available: 12/16, 12/20, 16/20, 20/30, 20/40, 30/40, 40/60
Pack Sizes: 25Kg bags or boxes, 125Kg barrels
Required Equipment: Dry compressed air
Colour: Clear, single colour, or mixed colour. Colour has no effect on product use.
Specification Conformity: MIL-P-85891 (A & B), UK Def Spec 80-194, Rolls Royce CSS200/227

Casting Applications for Plastic Blast Media
Plastic blast media is deal for use with many moulded parts, both metal and plastic. Flash can be safely removed without effecting critical dimensions, and sharp edges are maintained.

Further to its use with the cast parts plastic abrasives are also used for cleaning the moulds, leaving the surface dimension unchanged and without introducing a radius onto edges. Mould life is thus prolonged.

Solidstrip Urea Blasting Media
Urea is the most widely used plastic media, with a wide variety of uses from general paint stripping on aircraft wheels, undercarriages, ground support equipment, railway carriages and cars to the cleaning of tools and molds, and removing carbon deposits from engines and component parts. It also gets used for deflashing electronic parts.

In hardness terms it sits between Acrylic and Melamine media.

Specifications:
US Type II Urea Formaldehyde (Thermoplastic)
Hardness: 3.5 Moh (54-62 Barcol)
Sizes Available: 12/16, 12/20, 16/20, 20/30, 20/40, 30/40, 40/60
Pack Sizes: 25Kg bags or boxes, 125Kg barrels
Required Equipment: Dry compressed air
Colour: Predominantly white or cream with speckles of other colours.
Specification Conformity:MIL-P-85891 (A & B), Rolls Royce CSS200/227

Solidstrip Melamine Blasting Media
Melamine is the most "aggressive" of the three media provided by Solidstrip. As such it tends to be used in applications where the material being stripped or cleaned is at the harder end of the plastic media. Being softer than both tool steel and chromed moulds it is widely used for tool cleaning, with the benefit that sharp edges are retained and the tools useable life extended.

Melamine is used widely in industry for the cleaning of circuit boards, and for deburring, dejuking and deflashing.

Melamine can be considered as a media that sits between mineral based abrasives and natural products such as walnut shell. It is an aggressive media that carries the dual benefits of good cleaning/stripping efficiency with no damage to the underlying material.

Specifications:
US Type III Melamine (Thermoplastic)
Hardness: 4 Moh (64-72 Barcol)
Sizes Available: 12/16, 12/20, 16/20, 20/30, 20/40, 30/40, 40/60
Pack Sizes: 25Kg bags or boxes, 125Kg barrels
Required Equipment: Dry compressed air
Colour: Predominantly white or cream with speckles of other colours.
Specification Conformity:MIL-P-85891 (A & B)