Metro Wheels Develops New Process to Quickly Strip Wheels By Tim Gowens At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

For many years, Metro Wheels has struggled with how to remove the painted or powder coated surface of wheels. With the demand to provide high quality, it became an absolute necessity in our wheel repair and refinishing plant.

We purchased a large blaster and tried to remove the surface that way. It does remove the finish, but leaves the wheels pitted, which requires a lot of sanding and labor to make it smooth again.

We tried using various heat sources before blasting and, although it did help – a little – we still were not satisfied. The risk of using fire in the shop did not appeal to me, and the tanks for the flame were pretty costly.

The original process entailed:

1. Removing all wheel weights and valve stems
2. Placing the wheel into the blaster cabinet for about 10 minutes
3. Removing the wheel from the blaster after it cooled down
4. Placing the wheel into a second blaster. This upright manual blaster covered the hard-to-reach areas and corners, but could take an hour or more per wheel to complete. Because this system uses expensive acrylic blasting beads, it was costly as well as time-consuming.
5. Moving the wheel to the structure department.

It was the perfect opportunity to think outside the box of what has traditionally been done, so I invented something that’s worked out well, boosting our production times and my workers really like it.

For many years, we avoided using chemicals because of the smell, disposal issues, and mess it can create, not to mention the possibility of chemical burns with some products can create. We also couldn’t find a safe, acceptable way to completely submerge the wheels. Our only thought was to wear heavy gloves while inserting and removing wheels from a tank system. As you know, this simply would not do. The danger of getting the chemical on the skin or in the eyes was just too great.

So I began to sketch out what I thought would work and came up with a system that can safely dunk 3 wheels (up to 20") at a time into a chemical that completely strips all the paint and powder coat. This chemical has a slight odor, but is tolerable. The system uses:

· A large polypropylene tank,
· A system to dunk the wheels into the tank,
· Air agitation, and
· The chemical, which needs to be heated and filtered.

Once we started using the system, the gentleman in charge of the blasting became very excited about how easy production was now, mostly because his personal effort was cut in half.

Metro Wheels’ new dunk system dramatically improves our timeframe for delivery, which makes for happier wheel repair customers. The chemical softens the paints. After the chemical dries, our dunk process allows the automatic blaster to quickly remove all paints and powder coats. This virtually eliminates the need for any manual blasting.

This system will quickly pay for itself in the added production to the wheel plant. Perhaps you could provide the service in an area that is currently not being done, or you could use additional production in your wheel repair plant.

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