PETERBOROUGH, England – Airblast AFC has just completed work on a $1.4 million project for a large Ohio-based rail group that repairs, sells, manages and leases a fleet of almost 23,000 various types of railcars and locomotives. Airblast AFC is a joint venture between Airblast Ltd. and AFC Finishing Systems (AFC), who has been manufacturing paint spray booths, air make-up units, powder coating equipment throughout North America since 1967. 

The new facility is comprised of a blast booth, painting booth and drying booth for the maintenance of the railcars. The three booths are all roughly the same size at 7.62 m wide by 27.43 m long, allowing plenty of space for the larger railcars. The new facility features four blast machines that allow up to four operators to work on a job and personnel lifts to ensure the safety and comfort of the workers.

The most exciting feature of this installation is the innovative Airflex Recovery Floor for the automatic recovery of abrasive materials throughout blast booths. The Airflex Floor is made of modular “flexible” scraper corridors of six standard widths that can be produced to practically any length, giving enormous flexibility to recover from virtually any floor area. Unlike many other abrasive recovery systems where civil engineering costs and/or power consumption often dictate only partial floor coverage, the Airflex Recovery Floor utilizes 100 percent of the floor space, meaning that operators do not have to waste any time manually recovering abrasive. 

For more information, visit www.airblast.co.uk.