Blast room helps pipe fabrication shop handle increased product sizes

Situation

Based in Williamsport, Pa., NuWeld offers a variety of specialized welding, engineering, and fabrication services to the nuclear, natural gas, and power industries worldwide.

Part of the company’s operation includes full-service pipe, structural, and custom steel shop fabrication and field installation. A significant segment of the company’s business is fabricating piping for a gas industry customer, a process that involves abrasive blasting to prepare the piping for painting or coating before installation.

However, the piping, which used to be no more than 1 to 2 in. dia., has increased to as much as 24 in. over the years. This increased diameter has highlighted the deficiencies in the company’s abrasive blasting operation:

• The old blasting operation was a tarped-off area too small to accommodate the larger diameters.
• The blast media was contained in 3-cu.-ft. blast pots that had to be filled every eight minutes.
• To fill the pots, operators had to clean up all the blast media from the floor, as the material was not being reclaimed.

Resolution

Knowing it needed a complete overhaul of its abrasive blasting setup, NuWeld acquired a new blast room from Titan Abrasive Systems. At 20 ft. wide by 15 ft. high by 50 ft. long, the room accepts the 24-in. piping with ease while allowing operators ample room for unrestricted movement. The 4-ft.-wide by 50-ft.-long overhead crane slot with pneumatic door allows loading/unloading with the company’s existing overhead cranes.

The blast room also includes an efficient reclaim system, which uses an auger system with bucket elevator to recover blast media and feed it back into the blasting tank. Not only has this eliminated manual reclamation and bucket filling, it facilitated a switch in blast media that the company had been considering.

“We had been looking to switch to steel grit to blast our piping, but it’s extremely expensive,” said Noah Barrett, a NuWeld maintenance technician. “The problem is, if you don’t have a recovery process, it’s a highly impractical blasting media. With our previous blasting material, we were buying pallet after pallet of bags every time we began a new job. With the addition of the reclaim system to the blast room, it’s now economically feasible for us to use the steel grit. It not only cleans more quickly, but it also produces a better profile on our piping, creates better paint adhesion, and, ultimately, a better-quality product. We made the switch to steel grit and have not looked back.”

With the new reclamation system, operators can blast continuously for two hours before having to push the grit back into the auger. This has boosted work output and resulted in cost savings, since the initial amount of grit that was purchased when the blast room was installed is still in use.

Not only has the blast room made the finishing of gas production units easier, but it also allows the company to fabricate pressure vessels, water tanks, and burner units—all of which it is certified to handle but has never had the room to produce. The company now blasts 40-ft. frac tanks; 30-ton, 8-ft.-dia. pressure vessels; and wire spool stands more than 20 ft. long.

Dust collectors that came with the system keep dust to a minimum to protect workers from airborne particulates and maximize visibility.