A shipyard in New York harbour recently switched blasting abrasives to trial GMA ToughBlast™ garnet and discovered efficiencies across the operation. Previously using slag abrasives, the shipyard had to contend with several key issues affecting their operational costs and productivity – dust, disposal of slag and scheduling abrasive delivery to keep up with production.
Furthermore, the blasting operations were mainly conducted at night due to high dust levels.
The shipyard used GMA ToughBlast™ garnet for blast cleaning two steel ocean barges with a surface area of 10,219m
2(110,000ft
2) to a commercial blast of SP-6 and achieved significant results.
Using GMA ToughBlast™ garnet, the shipyard experienced substantial savings of up to 70% in abrasive consumption. The total garnet consumption was only 250 tonnes compared to 825 tonnes of copper slag typically required for a project of this size.
In addition, the reduced consumption rate also resulted in less downtime required to refill the blasting pots. Rather than refilling the eight-tonne blasting pot every 2.5 hours when using slag, the change to GMA ToughBlast™ garnet allowed workers to continue blasting throughout the night shift without interruption for refilling, which could then be completed by the day crew.
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