Wet Blasting Cabinets Play a Vital Role in Medical Implant Production

One of the best-kept secrets in the abrasive blasting industry is the vital role wet abrasive cabinets play in medical implant production. In fact, wet abrasive blasting cabinets almost became obsolete in favor of dry blasters.

A Quick History of Wet Blasting Cabinets

Wet abrasive delivery blasting cabinets were the first to be invented, but overtime dry cabinets developed. Wet abrasive sandblasting cabinets were considered too slow because they lacked the frictional heat added by Dry Abrasive Delivery.

Back in the 1950s people realized the water cushion in wet blasters could buffer just sharpened fabrication and milling tools without dulling the tool again. At the time, that application was considered a very small piece of the overall blast cabinet market share. As a result, many abrasive blasting cabinet manufacturers stopped building wet machines all together.

How Medical Implants Saved Wet Blasting Cabinets

Luckily, science and technology came to wet abrasive blasting’s rescue with the manufacturing of heart valves, hip-joints, knees, breast implants and also spinal implants. These devices use materials that are sensitive to frictional heat. In fact, Media Blast® wet blasting cabinets were processing dental implants right as they were hitting the market. The wet blasting process created the right surface needed and required for bone growth into the implant.

Media Blast® was smaller but because Media Blast® already had wet blasting cabinet experience we were able to gather lots of technical information about these new products. We were also able to use that feedback to create new blasting cabinets that were specially designed to meet the needs of the rapidly evolving medical device industry.

Wet Blasting Today

Today there are lots of Medical Implants and other applications that require wet blasting. Frictional heat caused by dry blasting is something many implants can’t withstand. So at Media Blast® we offer several wet abrasive blasting cabinets.

We manufacture a non-industrial wet blasting cabinet call the HydroSlurry® Wet Blasting Model. This machine using a smaller gun size so it is mostly for product restoration and not high production output. Remember that wet blasting is a slower blasting process, up to about 5 to 6 times slower. We also offer the Industrial Hurricane Wet Blasting Machines that uses lager gun sizes with almost double the abrasive in suspension to help speed up the slower processing time.

To Sum It Up

If you need help identifying what machine is right for your application, drop into our Buying Guide.Going through the questions will help you get familiar with all the different abrasives delivery types we make. If you have specific questions about whether your application requires wet blasting, you can reach our team here.