Guyson International, the UK’s foremost industrial finishing equipment manufacturer, has recently installed a Guyson Euroblast® 7PF (Pressure Fed) blast system into Merlin Archery, a leading designer and manufacturer of tournament shooting archery bows. The blast cabinet is used to deliver a uniform bead blasted cosmetic surface finish on their range of machined compound bows and to enhance the surface topography of components before anodising.

After successful blast trials to meet the surface finish requirements, overseen by Ben Jones the owner of Merlin Archery, were conducted at Guyson's Skipton headquarters and manufacturing site, which has remained open and fully working throughout the pandemic, Mr Jones was happy to sign off on purchasing the new blast system.

The chosen Euroblast 7PF blast system is from Guyson’s premier industrial quality range and delivers exceptional component access, with doors opening to the front, top and side, and facilitates easy loading of components into the internal blast chamber; which in this instance has the width of 1480 mm to accommodate the longest of the CNC machines aluminium compound bow parts.

Merlin Archery's blast system comprises a Guyson Euroblast 7PF blast cabinet, model 75/16 Cyclone Reclamator, G27 Pressure Pot and Guyson C400 dust collection unit and delivers fast (up to four-times faster than suction fed systems), effective blast finishing on a vast array of components. Large armhole sleeve/glove assembly allows the operator greater flexibility of movement when blasting and external roof-mounted LED lighting coupled with light coloured rubber curtain lining offers additional cabinet protection and good contrast for parts visibility.

The 27-litre capacity pressure pot, is used to generate the blast stream within the blast chamber and when the full-width foot pedal (so can be operated by either foot) is depressed it pressurises the pot and starts the blast operation; similarly releasing the pedal de-pressurises the pot and stops the process.

Blast media is fed from the pressure vessel into the cabinet through a heavy-duty hose to the blast nozzle, the flow of media being controlled by a manual pinch valve mounted on the cone of the pressure pot which regulates the volume of media being released into the compressed air stream.

The 75/16 cyclone reclamator is used to separate re-usable media from the dust, blast debris and undersize media. It does this by extracting everything from the bottom of the blast cabinet. The lighter particulates are drawn off to the dust collection unit, the heavier re-usable blast media flows back to the pressure pot, thus reducing the possibility of contamination by abraded particles and debris in the media which could reduce the consistency of finish. A trigger operated airwash gun is supplied as standard for post-blast removal of dust/residual media from the components.

The whole system is completed with a Guyson C400 dust collector, a highly efficient unit for filtering out and collecting the dust-laden air from the blast cabinet using a single cartridge filter. The heavier extracted particles being deflected downwards towards the collection bin, the lighter particles are captured on the surface of the filter. Any larger pieces of debris removed by blasting are captured in the blast cabinet by the heavy-duty perforated steel floor and a secondary perforated steel floor in the hopper captures smaller pieces of debris, thus reducing blockages in the blast hose/blast gun.

If you would like to improve the surface finish of your parts before anodising, powder coating, plating or any other type of surface finishing please contact Guyson’s Customer Service Department now to arrange free 'try before you buy' blast trials on your components, prove the process and make recommendations on the most suitable cabinet for you – call 01756 799911 or email info@guyson.co.uk

Product photos courtesy of Merlin Archery.