Paint Removal on a Fuel Tank for the Motorcycle Industry

Problem:

A customer in the motorcycle industry needed to remove paint from their motorcycle fuel tanks without disturbing the surface finish or deforming the tank shell. Conventional media could not be used as it caused warping and deformed the tank shells. In addition, a production rate of 2 tanks every 7 minutes was required to meet the customer’s production requirement.

Solution:

To design and test process methods best suited to the customer’s specifications, numerous trials were conducted in our state-of-the-art demonstration and R&D lab. We designed a custom fixture that would simultaneously hold two of the 18″W x 24″L x 12″H tanks. This fixture is part of a two-station indexing spinner hanger machine that allows two tanks to be unloaded/loaded while another two parts are being processed, our “in and out” design. During the blast cycle, the fixture indexes and rotates to ensure 100% exposure to the blast pattern. This provides proper processing in one cycle. In addition, we identified a blast media that was soft enough to remove only the paint and leave a fine, texture-less smooth surface for the tanks to be repainted. Utilizing the new process and media, the tanks were blasted with the custom blended media reaching a production rate of 2 tanks every 5 minutes. Industrial Associates looks forward to solving surface preparation issues for our customers’ demanding applications.

For more about this motorcycle shot blasting project please see the table below or contact us directly.

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Project Highlights