NOW THAT’S PROGRESSIVE

WATERJET STRIPPING · WATERJET CLEANING · WATERJET BLASTING

In 1967, Progressive Engineering Company built its first automated abrasive grit blasting system, a departure from the company’s established expertise in quality jigs and fixtures. Today, a new name—Progressive Surface®—reflects the company’s core competencies. “Since 1987, Progressive has designed, built, and installed over 100 water jet stripping systems—more than all of our competitors combined!”

Progressive systems offer:

• closed-loop process control
• highly integrated arm robots and turntables
• closed-loop water filtration
• custom-designed cleaning nozzles

WATERJET STRIPPING, OR WATER JET CLEANING, OR WATER JET BLASTING

Call it what you will. Waterjet cleaning uses a stream of supersonic water at pressures between 30,000 to 60,000 PSI to quickly remove difficult coatings and debris from a material substrate. Waterjet cleaning is different than conventional cleaning processes in that it uses much higher water pressures which require unique pump, hydraulic and control systems. Very hard coatings are essentially eroded from the substrate by the high pressure water droplets, while brittle coatings are fractured and spalled.

Water jet stripping, or water jet cleaning, or water blast cleaning, is a widely used process for the removal of material, coating, or contamination from the surface of a work piece. Progressive Surface has experience with all types of water jet processes and specializes in ultra-high pressure water jet stripping.

The water jet stripping process removes these coatings with one of two different mechanisms: erosion or delamination. Erosion is used on the majority of hard coatings such as metal and carbide thermal spray coatings. A special nozzle is used to break up the water stream into small droplets, which impact the surface of the coating. This causes small pieces of the coating to erode off the surface, leaving the substrate intact.

The other mechanism of removal is delamination, which is used on softer coatings such as paint, adhesives, ceramic and abradable thermal sprayed coatings. With these softer coatings a nozzle keeps the waterjet stream intact, allowing it to penetrate the coating and impact the substrate, spreading out to delaminate the coating at the bond interface. Much faster stripping rates are achieved with this type of coating removal as compared to the hard coatings that require erosion removal. It is crucial that the mode of removal is understood so that the correct water jet cleaning nozzle and process parameters are selected.

Most waterjet systems consist of the following subsystems:

• pump to pressurize the water
• nozzle to deliver the correct stream of water to the work piece
• enclosure to contain process
• nozzle and part manipulators
• waste handling equipment
• process control devices

WATERJET STRIPPING BENEFITS

The water jet cleaning process offers many benefits over competing conventional processes used to remove coatings. Traditionally the coatings removed with ultra-high pressure water were removed either by the use of chemicals or other conventional mechanical means such as abrasive blasting or machining. Chemical removal is expensive, slow, and environmentally unfriendly. Abrasive blasting or machining is more cost effective and faster than chemical processing, but cannot differentiate between the coating and the substrate, which usually results in removal of excessive material, thereby possibly scrapping or limiting the life of these parts.

Water jet cleaning systems are used to remove many coatings from a wide range of parts in the aerospace, automotive, and heavy equipment industries including:

Jet Edge supplies ultra-high pressure pumps and cleaning tools to support the aerospace, automotive and heavy equipment industries.