Dry Ice Blasting Printing Presses

Recently we were contracted by the Hub Folding Box Company, Inc. to clean several ink stations on a Heidelberg Speedmaster press located at their facility. The Hub Folding Box Company, Inc. is located in Mansfield, Massachusetts and creates specialty boxes for golf balls to bottles of Crown Royal. The company needed to have three ink stations cleaned. The reason for cleaning was that ink build-up was causing the rollers to bind up.

Fast forward a week from our initial meeting and we are arriving at the Hub Folding Box Company, Inc. on December 29th during the company’s winter shutdown. In less than an hour of our arrival we are setup and ready to go. We needed to focus our efforts cleaning the grippers, rollers, and surrounding structure of ink buildup and other contaminants. After blasting for a just a few minutes we realized how great an application this was. We have cleaned many other printing presses in the past, but this one cleaned faster than any other we ever worked on.

After about five hours of blasting, we had cleaned the three ink stations to our customer’s satisfaction. They were very pleased with the results and explained that we had saved them many man hours. Two hours later we were back in our home office. The bottom line is that dry ice blasting is very effective at cleaning water based inks.

If you are interested in learning more about dry ice blasting to remove ink buildup from your printing presses, please contact Ryan M. Taylor at (508) 459-7447. We are able to provide our dry ice blasting contract services on an as needed basis, or we can supply you with Cold Jet dry ice blasting equipment that fits your needs. If you would like to learn more about Cold Jet dry ice blasting equipment, please contact us at (508) 757-2300.

Dry Ice Blasting Power Generators

The Cryogenic Institute of New England, Inc. provides its dry ice blasting service for power generators throughout New England and parts of New York. Power generators require cleaning from time to time as maintenance procedures require. The photograph above shows us cleaning a generator in upstate Vermont.

There are many “accepted” methods for the cleaning of power generators. Some turbines are blasted with walnut shells to loosen up dirt and contaminants. The problem with this process is that walnut shells are left all over the turbine and must be removed. Another way to clean a turbine is to use detergents that are applied by hand. This takes a significant amount of time because hands only move so fast. In addition, some areas of the surface need to be scrubbed in order to remove contaminants.

The newest method to clean power generators is dry ice blast cleaning. Dry ice blasting utilizes dry ice and compressed air to remove dirt and contaminants from turbines, stators and generators. When the dry ice hits the surface it removes the contaminants and subliminates into the atmosphere. Therefore, there is no dry ice left over and the contaminants are blasted into the air. Cleaning time compared to the other two methods is also significantly reduced. Some generators can be cleaned in as little as 8-16 hours depending on size.

We have cleaned many power generators including turbines and stators for major energy companies in the New England region. If you are in need of dry ice blasting services for your power generation equipment, please contact us at 800-739-7949 or email rtaylor@nitrofreeze.com. For more information go to our web page about dry ice blasting for power generation equipment.