LRM Blaster technical director Tom Sowry tells Engineering News that with LRM’s new Triventek dry ice blasters, pelletisers and recovery units, the company can offer customers in the foundry industry a full and economical solution.

“CO2 shortages and dry-ice prices increasing dramatically had a negative effect on the market,” he says.

“Dry-ice blasting was becoming more accepted, but was becoming more expensive to run.” Sowry states that LRM’s solution to this problem was Triventek pelletisers and CO2 recovery units.

With this equipment, he explains, customers are now able to produce dry ice at less than half the price of what suppliers sell it for.

Triventek also offers a highly affordable single-hose dry-ice blaster, which is a more agressive and versatile counterpart to its two-hose blaster.

When using dry-ice blast-cleaning in foundry moulds, the dry ice cleans by means of a thermo-shock reaction, and dissipates back into gaseous CO2 after use. Thus there is no polluted water, sand, grit or other blasting media to be disposed of.

LRM Blaster has been the pioneer and major supplier of dry-ice blast-cleaning equipment to the South African foundry industry for the last eight years.

According to Sowry, the company began by importing its first equipment from the US, but adapted with the industry to begin manufacturing its own more affordable blasters.

LRM manufactured its two-hose dry-ice blaster using locally-available components to keep maintenance costs and downtime to a minimum.

Sowry enthuses that LRM is excited about the prospect of companies all around the country manufacturing their own dry ice for dry-ice blasting, shrink fitting and many other uses.

“This opens the market up tremendously and makes dry ice and dry-ice blasting more affordable than it has ever been,” he says.

“We would like to see companies all over the country manufacturing dry ice for blasting – not only in major centres.” Sowry also highlights the fact that LRM sees great possibilites for microbusinesses starting to supply the industry.

With LRM’s full solution of the Triventek Dry Ice Blaster, Dry Ice Pelletiser and CO2 recovery unit, a customer can now dry-ice blast anywhere in the country at an affordable price.

Sowry emphasises that with other systemsit takes some 2,5 kg to 3 kg of CO2 to produce 1 kg of dry ice, as 2 kg escapes and is lost into the atmosphere during production.

Triventek’s recovery unit collects this CO2, reliquefies it, and reuses it to make dry ice in a one-to-one conversion.

“Equipment of this size and price is totally unique in the market,” Sowry asserts.

“Dry-ice blasting has never really been available to the rest of Africa owing to the lack of availibility of dry-ice pellets. The Triventek Pelletisers and CO2 recovery units have now made this possible.” He reports that LRM Blast conducted its first successful trials with the Triventek pro-ducts in high-pressure die-casting at PDC, in Maritzburg.

With the range of bent nozzles and the clean-ing power of the Triventek single-hose blasters, Sowry states that LRM was able to clean high-pressure brass and aluminium moulds effectively.

LRM Blast is a small family-owned bus-iness that supplies foundries, particularly in the aluminium, rubber and plastics sectors, as well as tyre manufacturers, and the motor vehicle industry and its many component suppliers.