Hi, my name is Paul Goble. I’m the technical project manager here in BlastOne, and today we’re going to be walking through the MistBlaster Combo Skid.
A few things we’re going to go over are the actual MistBlaster cabinet box. This box is mounted to the outside of the pot to inject the water into your blast hose.
A few things inside the box are air-actuated ball valves. This is where the water actually flows through. So you’ll have a Mist Blast function and a Wash Down function. You’ll have your 5-to-1 pump that actually pushes your water to your air-actuated ball valves.
Other components in here are your auto air valve. So this is only going to kick on when you press your deadman trigger — either Mist Blast function, your Dry function, your Wash Down function, or Blow Down. This is going to help convey abrasive, water, and push air through your system.
On the MistBlaster cabinet, we have a couple features for your emergencies. You have your E-Stop push-pull. Then you have your four functions: Blow Down, Wash Down, Dry Blast, Mist Blast. And this is how you control how much water you’re putting through your system in a Mist Blast function. If you’re in the Wash Down function, this has no control over how much water you’re going to use for the system.
We’ve also made the system bi-powered. So you can use air, or you can use an electric-actuated deadman system, as well as a ball valve for priming the pump for your water.
So what we’ve done with the Combo Skid is we’ve implemented a breathing system. One, it gives you clean air, and two, it actually monitors your air for carbon monoxide when you’re using diesel or inside an area that could have potential carbon monoxide.
So this is a GX4. This is going to monitor your carbon monoxide levels. It will alarm at 10 ppm, giving you a warning, letting you know so you can get out of the area or disconnect and move out and get fresh air.
So this runs off 12 volt, or you can have a 110 volt. We supply it with battery clips. That way you can attach it to the battery that’s located on the unit.
And on the back side of that, we actually have the Radex. So on this unit specifically, this is a two-outlet Radex, 125 psi max rating. You want to make sure you regulate it down to 125 so you don’t pop the PRV.
For these units, you’re going to change the filter out either on a three-month basis, or you’re going to do it every 400 hours. Typically, when they come in, a date is thrown on, we replace the filter and send it back out. It comes back in three months later, same process.
We have a deliquescent air dryer. So this is a 400 CFM air dryer with salt tablets inside to remove as much moisture as possible through the system.
Attached to that is an aftercooler. So when compressed air makes its way through the system, the air is going to travel through the air aftercooler, expand rapidly, and when that expansion happens, it cools and creates moisture. And the aftercooler blows any excess moisture out before it makes its way through the deliquescent, where that deliquescent is going to pull even more moisture out of the system before it makes its way into the pot.
So the thing with our Combo Skid is it’s water injected. You don’t mix the water with the abrasive like you would a slurry machine. The water actually is injected into the hose, or the blast hose, and it encapsulates the abrasive before it meets with the substrate.
So typically, where you’d see dust coming into the air, here you’ll see actual vapor in the air, and then it will cascade down on the ground.
Here we have our 50-gallon tank. This tank will typically last you about a full day on one person. We got it down to a pint per minute for the actual Mist Blast function. So for our typical eight-hour day, this whole tank should last you.
One thing that’s pretty common is, “Hey, I’m not getting any water through my nozzle.” Typically, it’s because the pump has cavitated, and you can prevent that simply by priming — priming the pump with this ball valve over here.
So another issue we find common is, “Hey, my pot’s puking a whole bunch. I’m not getting it to shut down. I’m getting just nothing but abrasive.” What we typically find is the auto air valve. Abrasive can backtrack its way to the auto air valve and typically stops the plunger from opening up or closing.
When that happens, it can either stay closed or stay open. Typically, it stays open, and then the blaster will have to figure out how to walk all the way back to the machine to shut it off — either E-Stop or just shut the choke valve.
Here we have the TeraValve. Typical issues that we’ll see with these, outside of normal wear and tear, is the plunger sticking open and causing just an immense amount of abrasive to spew from your nozzle. So you run really rich, almost puking out.
An issue that typically arises is abrasive getting stuck in between the tungsten carbide plunger and the housing, and it creates too much friction for it to close.
Another issue we can find is the diaphragm within the TeraValve has a small tear or hole in it. So on the initial hit with the blast, with the deadman, you’ll find that you’ll get some spewing of abrasive, but it’ll slowly die and close. There’s a pullback here that you can feel on the breather vent. See if there’s air blowing out continuously. You’ll know that your diaphragm has a rupture in it, or is a ruptured diaphragm.
Other issues we see on site are where we’re not getting water. So after the priming troubleshooting steps, we typically have them come over here and decouple these lines. Sometimes abrasive can backtrack and clog these lines. Pulling these out and just shooting water out to clear the lines, and then plugging them back in, typically does the trick.
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