How To Inspect The Quality Of Steel Shot And Sand?

Steel shot is one of the commonly used abrasives, made from selected raw materials such as scrap steel. Steel shot is commonly used for the treatment of metal surfaces, and products treated with steel sand can meet national standards.
High quality steel sand products have moderate hardness, strong toughness, impact resistance, and can be repeatedly used several times. At the same time, they also have many characteristics such as long service life, good resilience, strong adhesion, fast cleaning speed, low sand consumption, non fragmentation, high brightness of cleaning workpieces, and good technical effects.
Of course, this is the advantage of high-quality steel sand, and the treatment effect of inferior steel sand is greatly compromised. So how to test the quality of steel sand?
1、 Hardness. If the steel sand is too soft, it will slow down the cleaning speed and reduce work efficiency. When sandblasting strengthening, too soft steel sand cannot generate suitable residual stress, and the force of low hardness sand cannot be compensated by increasing the impact time. If the hardness is too high, it will produce an unsatisfactory surface morphology, increase the probability of sand fragmentation, increase consumption, and cause significant wear on the equipment, increasing equipment maintenance costs. Therefore, appropriate hardness is also crucial.
2、 Microstructure. The microstructure of steel sand must be able to resist deformation and reduce energy loss and fatigue life when applied to the working face. Tempered martensite is fatigue resistant, and in addition, brittle carbides must be reduced in the microstructure, otherwise it will cause premature fracture of steel sand and increase its usage.
3、 Chemical composition. Determine the microstructure of steel sand and the effect of subsequent heat treatment. The carbon content should be moderate, and silicon and manganese can improve the strength and hardness of steel sand, so it should be as high as possible. Sulfur and phosphorus are harmful elements that can easily cause brittleness in steel sand, leading to premature fracture. They should be kept as low as possible.
4、 Fatigue life. Fatigue life is the ability of steel shot sand to resist crushing when applied to the working surface. Abrasives with a longer fatigue life will become economical abrasives if they can convert appropriate energy into cleaning.
5、 Physical defects. Steel sand must contain as few physical defects as possible that can cause abrasive fracture. Due to the production process used, there are always certain physical defects in steel sand. There must be corresponding processes for control in production to reduce the proportion of defective particles.