CO2 jet cutting 4

[Bergg]

Has anyone heard of a process that uses carbon dioxide like a water jet? Apparently when the bottled gas is released through a nozzle it forms crystals that can impact a material and cut it and then turns to a gas leaving a very clean workspace.

Application is cutting some fabrics.

Thanks

Gins

 

[Skogsgurra]

Are you sure that you do not think about carbon dioxide lasers? They are powerful enough to do cutting jobs.

The only application where CO2 is being used for abrasion is in CO2 blasting, where the CO2 crystals are used to clean motor windings and such things. The CO2 crystals are less damaging than the sand or steel shots normally used for blasting.

 

[sreid]

You may be looking for liquid nitrogen Nitrojet cutting by Nitrocision.

http://www.nitrocision.com/

 

[jdkuhndog]

Here is a link to a summary of some testing done with CO2 blasting...is this what you are referring to?

http://sti.srs.gov/fulltext/tr2003084/tr2003084.pdf

page 11 has a good picture of the CO2 pellets.

 

[Bergg]

Thanks for your inputs friends very enlightening and much appreciated.

 

[Dennyd]

Bergg,

About 10 years ago I worked with a variety of environmentally compliant paint stripping technologies for aircraft when I was with McDonnell Aircraft (now Boeing) in St. Louis. One of the most promising was CO2 pellet blasting from Cold Jet near Cincinnati. Their process takes liquid CO2, flashes it into a snow, compresses the snow into pellets and then uses compressed air to transport the pellets through a supersonic nozzle to blast the painted surface. It worked very well to remove paint. By the time you were ready to clean up, the dry ice had sublimated and all you had to do was sweep up the paint chips. They also worked with a group from McDonnell Aircraft to develop the FlashJet which uses a high-energy flashlamp and an elliptical reflector to char the painted surface then hit it with the ColdJet blast.

I found Cold Jet on the web by using the Vivisimo search engine (actually not a search engine, but more of an organizer - I prefer it 100-1 over Google. Check it out at

http://vivisimo.com/)

and I put in "CO2 blasting". There are several firms doing this, but Cold Jet is really the pioneer.

http://www.alpheus2clean.com/

I think this is what you are looking for. What is your interest?

- - -Dennyd

 

[Bergg]

Dennyd:

Thanks for your very interesting input. I am working on some edge lit acrylic signs used in Museums signage and even the odd bar. There are designs that would be nice to have sand blasted into the acrylic and people do that but acrylic scratches pretty easily and when edge lit every imperfection show up dramtically so good cleanup is important. I saw the nitrogen blasting displayed at a show but its very expensive.

This led me to wonder about CO2 blasting as I had heard of its existance but didn't know its capability.

Thanks again.

Bergg

 

[Dennyd]

Bergg,

In my last job I was working with emergency lighting - the kind of lights you don't want to see in your rearview mirror! We were very involved with all the lighting technologies including LED. How do you plan to illuminate your signs?

Regarding the acrylic, there are many ways to "etch" the light scattering surfaces, depending on a lot of things: illumination requirements, appearance in on and off states, design complexity, annual volume, etc. By the way, I now live in a dry county and would love to find a bar, even an odd one!

- - -Dennyd

 

[Bergg]

Dennyd

Those lights!!! I was in the body armor business for years and saw many of those lights outside the shop.

We are using color change LEDs red, green and blue microprocessor controlled to cycle through some colors.

We have been using cut vinyl a lot including one type that mimics the sand blast effect but I am just getting into this business so have a lot to learn.

Dry you say ... toooooo bad.

Bergg

 

[Dennyd]

I'm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of north Georgia and far western North Carolina. It is gorgeous!!!

Dry counties were the inspiration/motivation for white lightnin!! You can even get it in peach and other flavors to cool your burning mouth!

- - -Dennyd

 

[Bergg]

Dennyd:

Enjoy those mountains and sample a little of that white lightnin for me. Hey do you think that would be a good way to etch my acrylic??

Bergg

 

[Dennyd]

You'll think so after you sample some!!

- - -Dennyd