Skipton-based finishing-equipment manufacturer Guyson International Ltd (
www.guyson.co.uk) has designed and built a robotic blasting system for a leading manufacturer of high-performance coatings.
This will be used for keying the surface of aerospace seal rings prior to plasma spraying and for the surface preparation of turbine-blade tips prior to thermal spray coating.
The Guyson RB10 blast cabinet features a small 7th-axis turntable designed to accommodate the customer’s varied fixtures. Located in the back wall of the cabinet is the arm of an ABB robot, equipped with a boron carbide blast nozzle that it precisely manipulates around the fixtured components, maintaining the optimum surface speed, blasting angle and distance between blast nozzle and component.
The robot actually has two blast nozzles, fed by two 55-litre pressure pots, which can be filled with different media. Monitoring and control of the blast system is provided via a PLC/HMI graphical display that gives a real-time view of what is happening throughout the system.
This can be programmed to display screen messages providing warnings or indicating failures.