Ultra High Pressure Surface Preparation
UHP blasting for coating removals and surface preparation for new coating applications has been undertaken by Giant GPEM LLC over many years.
Our clients who are predominately working on the refurbishment and re coating industries call us to supply our UHP pump units with a variety of accessories.
These UHP pump units and accessories are designed to undertake the removal of paint and coating systems from ship hulls and decks, Helicopter landing decks, flight decks, drilling platforms, oil and gas facilities both on and offshore, tanks and vessels, practically all steel surfaces that have been previously blast prepared and coated with a protective cover can effectively refurbished with UHP water blasting.
UHP water blasting has been in use since the early 1990's with high pressure pump manufacturers and coating suppliers being at the forefront of the industry.
The paint and coatings manufacturers realised the potential of the UHP systems at an early stage, this was due to the capability of the UHP water jets now being able to remove damaged and existing coatings to a suitable standard as equivalent as an SA 2.5 and SA 3 grit blasted surface.
In ship building and ship repair industries the UHP water blasting is particularly effective due to favourable clean and blasted surface preparation. Further to above it was also discovered that UHP Blasting rapidly washed away hidden salt residues from the steel surface which grit blasting was locked back into the steel due to the impact of the grit effectively opening and closing the steel surfaces being prepared.
The above discovery was one of the main reasons why coating companies around the world started to promote UHP blasting ahead of the time-honored grit blasting surface preparation systems.
The downside of UHP blasting was the fact the UHP water cannot prepare a steel surface which has not been previously blasted using impact systems such as grit and abrasive blast materials.
Refurbishment of steel surfaces already prepared by abrasives is the area of most use of UHP systems.
We are all aware that typical grit blasting causes a multitude of additional problems adding costs to the client and the environment, this is primarily due to difficult containment of dust and grit which can find its way into expensive equipment and the disposal costs to remove grit, paint flakes, dust and dispose in an environmentally safe manner.
Giant GPEM LLC offers a variety of accessories to undertake surface preparation work.
Included in our accessories are walk behind Deck blasting equipment, automated robotic equipment, magnetic crawlers and handheld UHP guns.
Each of our UHP accessories are used for a variety of surface preparation projects, with hand held rotary guns, offering comparable results in quantities of preparation as that of grit blasting nozzles with upwards of 9m sq per hour, whilst our deck blasters with an average of 25 m sq per hour, with our Robotic equipment we can achieve twice that of the deck blaster with 50 sq m per hour achievable.