Bead Blasting

Cleanliness is king when it comes to surface heat treatments.

Glass bead blasting is an effective surface preparation technique used at Alberta Industrial to mechanically remove oxides, debris, and residue that can interfere with obtaining the best possible surface response in the material. Bead blasting combined with standard chemical degreasing effectively improves the treatment uniformity and maximizes the depth of hardening particularly for gas nitriding processes.

We shot peen after heat treating to remove scale and to improve the ease of handling and visual uniformity.

We also offer bead blasting post-heat treatment to remove process scale and improve the part appearance.

Masking

For the nitriding and carburizing processes, it is possible to selectively harden surfaces of a component rather than the entire exposed surface area using an inhibitor. These areas can be “masked” off to prevent local changes to the mechanical properties during case hardening. The application of paint, paste, or tape effectively inhibits the hardening response in these targeted areas making it possible to treat the component without compromising sensitive features such as threads, sharp radii, high-stress areas, sharp corners or holes. The masking is removed upon completion of the nitriding treatment with no impact on the surface or performance of the part.