Vacuum blasting, although very clean, is slow and meticulous work. For that reason – (it slows productivity) – it’s not the most practical choice for most blasting projects.

However, our 4+ decades of industry experience finds there are a few scenarios where vacuum blasting is the smart option.

Vacuum blasting requires a high-pressure vacuum built into a specifically designed workhead that brings both blast and vacuum together at the blast surface.

Vacuum blasting can’t be rushed. Productivity tends to max out at 50 ft²/hr (5 m²/hr) and that’s when you’re blasting large flat surfaces with easy access. Projects requiring- say, the vacuum blasting of pipework, will more likely max out around 10-20 ft²/hr (1-2 m²/hr).

When should a contractor consider vacuum blasting?

• Small touch up jobs
• Jobs where access is hard
• Where you don’t want to put up encapsulation.
• Removing a hazardous coating in an environment where you cannot establish dust containment. *

*  Vacuum blasting effectively reclaims about 95% Dust and abrasive.

BEST SCENARIOS FOR VACUUM BLASTING

Vacuum blasting as a whole is much slower than open blasting. The Mini-BRS units give you up to 20 ft²/hour (1.85m²/hour). While a 3.5 or 6.5 BRS unit might get you up to 40 ft²/hour (3.71m²/hour). It all depends on the complexity of the space. But in this tip we’re going to give you four scenarios where vacuum blasting is the ideal choice over open blasting, which we do traditionally.

4 APPLICATIONS WHERE VACUUM BLASTING EXCELS

1.  SPOT REPAIR  – where you’re blasting between 1-5% of the surface. It’s great because there’s no set up, no mess… And you can blast little spots – get in and paint it, and be done very quickly.
2. STRIPE COATINGS – where you’re stripping the coatings for an NDT inspection of the welds. NDT stands for nondestructive testing. Which generally refers to critical components such as aircraft landing gear, nuclear reactors, or bridge beams…that might hold up a bridge. Vacuum blasting is perfect for handling these “size restricted” and defined areas for blasting.
3. CORROSION REMOVAL IN A VERY SENSITIVE AREAS.  For example, might be the floor of an engine room on a boat. There’s a lot of work to blast that effectively without stripping everything out. With a vacuum blast we can do that very efficiently.
4. TOXIC PAINT REMOVAL IN VERY SENSITIVE AREAS.  For example, let’s say you’re hired to remove the toxic paint from an access panel inside the government building. You can take the panels off-site to clean and blast, but the frames in that building still need to be handled on-site. That’s when vacuum blasting has a huge advantage over open blasting and containment.

2 TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR VACUUM BLASTING RESULTS

1. USE TWO OPERATORS – It’s very ineffective for one operator to try and manage a bundle of hoses while trying to effectively work that vacuum head. We’d recommend two operators… one holding the vacuum head, one holding the hoses and the deadman. If the operator’s on a boom lift or on a floor, it is possible to go it alone, but the prolonged pressure on the wrist and so on, makes it seriously hard to do. It’s just physically very tough to execute with a single operator. They slow down because fatigue lowers their productivity.
2. USE NON-METALLIC ABRASIVES – When you’re working on flat work, you roughly collect 95-99% of the dust and about 90% of the abrasive. This means you always get a trickle of abrasive dropping down. So non-metallic abrasive is best to use in these situations. Why?  Because metallic dust can adversely affect sensitive nearby electronics, and the metallic abrasive shavings left behind is also bad. So if you’re using metallic to be very conscious that you’re leaving a trail behind, that’s eventually going to rust and possibly compromise that work area.