3 ms·
This looks like an excellent application for 'Dry Ice Blasting', which is essentially 'sandblasting' done with a different medium. For cleaning fouled surfaces
by toss1 5y ago
This looks like an excellent application for 'Dry Ice Blasting', which is essentially 'sandblasting' done with a different medium. For cleaning fouled surfaces and/or for preparing new surfaces for bonding or coating, there is a surprisingly large range of related technologies and materials, everything from near-diamond to soft like walnut shells. Dry Ice offers great advantages of leaving no solid residue itself, and being relatively mild on the underlying surfaces, while also having the extra boost of wedging slightly under the grime as a solid and then vigorously expanding, providing extra lifting action.
Applying this to rail seems like a great idea, since the weight and mass of the apparatus is not really a problem in that situation.
Cool stuff!
- xchaotic 5y agoIs it not going to wear down the tracks at an accelerated rate though? (Which also implies delays for maintenance)
- lostapathy 5y agoNo. Dry ice cleaning is nuts - you can calibrate the pressure and granular size to not damage the substrate. High end car blasters can clean 40 year old plastic and rubber parts with dry ice and make them look like new.
- extrapickles 5y agoYou use CO2 blasting to clean optics as it can be quite gentle when the system is tuned right. For some optical coatings, CO2 is pretty much the only way to mechanically clean them without damage.