New facility equipped with "Ventus" surface preparation machines

New facility equipped with "Ventus" surface preparation machinesKeywords: USF Vacu-Blast, Pratt & Whitney, Blasting, Aero engines

Pratt & Whitney Canada (UK) Ltd has recently opened a brand new 40,000m²aeroengine repair and overhaul facility on a greenfield site at Southampton International Airport, dedicated to its "PW100" prop and "F'T6"turbo-shaft engines which are fitted to a variety of regional aircraft and helicopters. The engines are delivered to the facility for routine maintenance or repair from aircraft operators throughout the world.

Representing an investment of £25 million, the facility embodies the state-of-the-art in the stripping, reworking, rebuilding and testing of engines,and incorporates the latest component cleaning, surface preparation,pretreatment, painting, plating and thermal spray systems and equipment.

This includes five "Ventus® 125P" dry abrasive blasting cabinet machines manufactured by USF Vacu-Blast International, which are used for the surface preparation of a wide range of steel, titanium and magnesium alloy components prior to plasma spray, and for pre- and post-surface treatment when applying inorganic aluminium coatings (Plate 7). The media employed is aluminuium oxide and each machine has a swing-in turntable to assist loading/unloading and component orientation.

Manually operated, the five new Ventus machines are housed in a room dedicated to abrasive blasting operations. This also contains a wet blasting machine from Vacu-Blast's sister company USF Abrasive Developments, and a Vacu-Blast dry "Dasic" cabinet which is used for stripping paint from castings.

 Plate 7 Ventus® 125P dry abrasive blasting cabinet machine in operation at Pratt& Whitney Canada (UK) Ltd's site at Southampton International Airport

Featuring a 1,250mm x 1,000mm x 950mm high processing enclosure, the Ventus 125P is described as a powerful pressure-fed machine designed to cope with the toughest surface preparation and finishing applications and environments. The enclosure has high internal illumination and a large viewing window to aid process visibility, plus a generous access door designed to eliminate media spillage.

The machine is also reported to feature an integral high efficiency blast media recovery and separation system which automatically recycles reusable media to the blast nozzle – maximising media usage – and an advanced high-efficiency reverse-jet dust collector which reduces dust emission and noise levels.

"We have had a close working relationship with Vacu-Blast over a number of years and selected the Ventus machines because of their robustness and proven reliability in a demanding, continuous operating environment such as ours, where quality is always of paramount importance", said Lee Franckeiss, production support engineer at the new Pratt & Whitney facility.

Further details are available from USF Vacu-Blast International. Tel: +44(0)1753 526511; Fax: +44 (0)1753 538093; e-mail: info@vacu-blast.co.uk