Based in Cornwall
Dry Ice Blasting for Manufacturing
Reduce downtime with non-abrasive cleaning for machinery, production lines, tooling and industrial equipment.
Manufacturing
Contamination is a process variable, not a housekeeping issue
Oil mist, release agent, resin, adhesive, ink and swarf accumulate across tooling, fixtures, guarding and transfer systems. The effect shows up in the numbers before it shows up on the shop floor: tolerances drift, rejects rise, changeovers run long, and a scheduled clean becomes an unscheduled stop.
The usual answers all cost something. Solvent wipe-down is slow, inconsistent and hazardous. Water means drying time and corrosion risk. Abrasive methods remove parent material and leave media in every seam and cavity. Most require the tool to come out of the machine.
Dry ice blasting avoids all four. Solid CO₂ pellets are accelerated at the surface; on impact each pellet sublimes, lifting contamination away without touching the substrate underneath. No abrasion. No moisture. No secondary waste.
Our equipment
The right equipment, and the judgement to use it
Consistency is the whole point. Hobby-grade units and undersized compressors lose pressure as the job runs on and introduce moisture into the air stream, so the finish at the end of a shift does not match the start. On a tooling face that variation is a defect.
Kaeser and Boge compressors hold constant airflow at constant pressure. Tundra air dryers keep the supply dry. M-class extraction and containment screening keep dislodged contamination out of adjacent cells and off finished stock.
We assess the substrate, the contamination and the operating context, then configure pellet size, flow rate and pressure around them. Gentle enough for a polished tool face or a sensor housing. Firm enough for cured resin on a press frame.
Services
Every service, one method
Every service on this page uses the same dry ice CO₂ process. No abrasives. No moisture. No chemicals. Scope is set against your tooling, your tolerances and your production schedule.
Tooling & fixtures
Moulds & tooling
Cavities, cores, vents, slides and parting lines. Release agent, gassing residue and cured build-up removed without polishing out detail or altering surface finish.
Press tools & dies
Die faces, radii, pilots and guides cleaned of pick-up, lubricant residue and oxidation, with no dimensional change to the tool.
Jigs, fixtures & nests
Locating faces, clamps and datums cleaned in place. Where a fixture holds position, the contamination on it is a tolerance error waiting to happen.
Extrusion & profile dies
Land areas, bearings and flow surfaces cleaned of carbonised polymer without the soak times and hazard of chemical stripping.
Robot tooling & end effectors
Grippers, weld tips, dispensing heads and sensor faces cleaned in position, with no fluid introduced into the cell.
Plant & lines
Conveyors & transfer systems
Belts, rollers, chains, guides and frames. Product residue, adhesive and lubricant build-up removed without disassembly.
Guarding & enclosures
Guards, screens, light curtain faces and cell interiors, cleaned dry so the equipment they protect stays inspectable.
Paint & coating lines
Overspray and cured coating removed from jigs, hooks, masking fixtures, booth surfaces and extraction paths.
Adhesive & resin build-up
Cured adhesive, sealant and resin fractured cleanly from tooling, nozzles and surrounding equipment by thermal shock rather than scraping.
Print & ink residue
Rollers, anilox surfaces, plates, decks and dryer paths cleaned of dried ink and varnish without solvent bath or abrasive contact.
How we programme it
Changeover support
Cleaning inside the changeover window, dry, so the next run starts on a clean tool rather than a wiped one.
In-situ tooling clean
Tools cleaned in the machine wherever access allows. Avoiding removal, transport and re-setting is usually the largest part of the saving.
Planned shutdown clean
A packaged programme across cells, lines and plant during scheduled downtime, with nothing left wet to delay restart.
Pre-inspection & handover
Cleaning ahead of customer audit, machine handover, sale or relocation, where condition needs to be visible and verifiable.
Recurring maintenance clean
A scheduled interval agreed against your production plan, so build-up never reaches the level that affects output quality.
What it delivers
Four reasons manufacturers programme this in
The first job is usually a problem being solved. The programme that follows is a variable being controlled.
Fewer contamination defects
Clean tooling and clean fixtures remove a recurring cause of rejects, rework and dimensional drift.
Shorter, drier changeovers
No soak time, no drying time and no tool removal. The clean fits the window instead of extending it.
No parent material lost
The process is non-abrasive, so tooling is cleaned rather than worn. Surface finish and dimensions are unchanged.
Cleaning without strip-down
Equipment cleaned in place, often in operation, which removes the downtime that made cleaning something to defer.
Cleaning as an operational discipline rather than a cosmetic one. The method serves the environment, not the other way round.
Coverage
Nationwide, fully mobile
Compressor, dry ice blasters, M-class extraction and containment screening all travel with us. There is no fixed geography. A plant in Yorkshire gets the same process as one in Devon.
In shutdown
Programmed into your downtime
Work scheduled into a planned stop, weekend or shutdown. Nothing is wet at the end of it, so the line is available the moment we are clear.
In production
Cleaned live, in place
Where the process allows, tooling and plant are cleaned in position and in operation. Containment and extraction confine the working area and the line continues around us.
In-situ cleaning
The tool never has to leave the machine
The cost of cleaning a mould or a press tool is rarely the cleaning. It is the removal, the handling, the transport, the wait, the re-setting and the first-off inspection afterwards. That sequence is why tooling gets cleaned less often than it should.
Dry ice changes the arithmetic. The process is dry, non-abrasive and self-clearing, so tooling can be cleaned hot, in the machine, with extraction at source and no media to recover from the cavity afterwards.
Cleaning stops being an event that has to be justified and becomes an interval that can be scheduled. That is usually where the quality improvement comes from, rather than from any single clean.
Access, isolation and cycle timing are agreed with your engineering team before work is booked.
Assets we clean
What we clean in manufacturing
Plastics and polymer, packaging, print, automotive supply, consumer goods and general engineering. If contamination is affecting output quality or changeover time, it is the kind of work we do.
Get in touch
Request a process assessment
Tell us what you run, where contamination is costing you and how your downtime is structured. We will assess the work and come back with a scope and a price.
- Assessment from a site visit or your photographs
- A written scope and quotation
- No obligation
Prefer to speak to a specialist? Call 01736 804118