Artillery Case Shot Blasting Machine

Artillery Case Shot Blasting Machine

An artillery case shot blasting machine cleans the inner and outer surfaces of artillery and cartridge cases in one clamping, before painting, coating or reloading. It runs two processes: the outer wall by wheel blasting, the bore by sandblasting through a blast gun. Loading, blasting and unloading are automatic. The same machine cleans steel, acetylene and oxygen cylinders, which share the geometry that makes cases hard to handle — a narrow bore and a wall thin enough to distort under a bad grip. It cleans; it does not resize, anneal or proof-load, and it does not shot peen.

How Wheel Blasting and Gun Blasting Work Together

The two processes are not interchangeable, for a geometric reason. A blast wheel throws abrasive in a fan — efficient across a flat outer surface, and exactly what stops it reaching the bottom of a narrow cavity. A blast gun reaches anywhere the nozzle fits, but cleans a spot rather than a surface, so running the outside on a gun would be uneconomically slow. Carrying both is the only way to finish a case inside and out in one cycle. A single-process machine leaves either the bore untouched or the outside too slow.

Cases are held by a clamp engaged from loading to discharge, with no re-fixturing between passes. Every extra grip is another chance to ovalise a mouth that must chamber to tolerance. Flexible clamping holds the case without point loading on the wall.

Abrasive for the two passes is not necessarily the same. A gun entering a narrow bore needs a finer, free-flowing abrasive and a smaller nozzle; what works best outside is often too coarse to pass a bore nozzle without bridging. Whether both passes share one recovery system is fixed against the case drawing.

Dust is drawn off through an integrated cartridge dust collector, with extraction points at the bore as well as at the wheel.

What the Machine Buys You

One clamping, two surfaces. The case never leaves the fixture between passes, so no extra grip is added that could ovalise a thin wall.

A bore that is actually cleaned. This separates it from an external-only blaster, which leaves scale, carbon and old primer where a reloaded case cannot tolerate them.

Throughput set by the cycle, not the operator. Automatic handling makes output repeat shift to shift.

Abrasive economy. Abrasive is recovered and classified before reuse — on a dedicated line the cost that matters is abrasive per thousand pieces.

A surface grade you can inspect. Sa 2½ and Sa 3 to ISO 8501-1, roughness set by abrasive size. Acceptance criteria, not adjectives.

Configuration Built Around the Case

There is no catalogue model code, deliberately. A case line is defined by the case, not a frame size: at the same nominal diameter, a thick mouth and an annealed body need different fixtures.

Five inputs fix the configuration — case diameter and length, which set the handling envelope and the bore depth the gun must reach; wall thickness at mouth and body, which sets clamp pressure; target grade, Sa 2½ or Sa 3, and any roughness the coating system specifies; required throughput; and input condition, since refurbishment stock needs a longer gun pass than new production.

Cases outside the usual artillery and small-arms families are engineered to order. Send the drawing and the acceptance grade; the configuration follows.