Dry Ice Blasting for Vacuum Furnaces

It is amazing how dry ice blasting can be used to clean so many different types of surfaces. This week, we completed a dry ice blasting job at Bodycote Thermal Processing in Worcester, MA. The objective at this facility was to clean the interior of the vacuum furnace before a new coating was applied. The vacuum furnace was to be cleaned using our Nitrofreeze® Dry Ice Blast Cleaning process and then a special coating was to be painted on to protect the chamber. Come watch our dry ice blast cleaning of a vacuum furnace video.

The vacuum furnace had been taken off line and some parts were removed to make cleaning easier. I had the opportunity to take photographs of the vacuum furnace before, during and after dry ice blasting. The furnace was in good shape for its age considering it was manufactured in 1979. Vacuum furnaces are used for brazing, sintering and heat treatment. These furnaces are widely used because air and other gasses are not present, which could cause contamination. Below is a picture of the vacuum furnace that we cleaned.



The door and inner chamber of the vacuum furnace needed to be cleaned. The door had a white residue on it that needed to be dry ice blasted before the new coating was applied. In addition, the inner chamber had the same white residue and a few other types of buildup on it. Below are pictures of the vacuum furnace door and chamber before dry ice blasting.



Dry ice blasting was a great cleaning application for this vacuum furnace. The furnace cleaned up very well and quite easily. We used a larger air compressor that gave us a higher pressure to clean the vacuum furnace at. This made cleaning the furnace much easier than other industrial machines we have cleaned in the past. Below is a photograph of Robin dry ice blast cleaning the door of the vacuum furnace.



After a day’s work, the dry ice blasting job was completed. The results were quite impressive. The residue that needed to be removed was blasted right off. Below are pictures of the vacuum furnace door and chamber after dry ice blasting. Both our customer and our company were highly satisfied with the results. Now, our customer can paint the coating on to the interior of the chamber without worrying about it lifting.



For more information about our Nitrofreeze® Dry Ice Blast Cleaning service, please visit our dry ice blast cleaning web page. If you have any questions or comments about dry ice blast cleaning, please email info@nitrofreeze.com or call us at (508) 459-7447.