Printing Presses, TCA & Dry Ice Blasting

Dry ice blasting cleans without toxic chemicals such as Trichloroethlene, or TCA, a man-made ozone-depleting chemical regulated by the EPA.  Dry ice blast cleaning provides an alternative to TCA.

Rather than using TCA for cleaning printing presses, solid rice-sized pellets of dry ice can be used as a blasting medium for cleaning ink and other residue from commercial printing presses.

	Ink bar before dry ice blasting.
	Ink bar after dry ice blasting

The dry ice pellets are "blasted" from a source of compressed air which is where the term "dry ice blasting" originates.

When the dry ice pellets impact the surface, the drop in surface temperature helps to pierce the contaminant or residue, loosening it from its substrate.  

The dry ice pellets disintegrate upon impact and dissipate to the atmosphere, leaving no hazardous solvents such as TCA to dispose of.  Above is an example of using dry ice blasting to clean an ink bar.

The speed and flow of the dry ice pellets can be controlled via the dry ice blasting apparatus

Dry ice blast cleaning allows machinery to be cleaned on-line, which results in decreased labor time and less down time.

Featured Dry Ice Cleaning Example - Printing Presses
	Before This commercial printer saves hours of cleaning time with dry ice blasting.  No tedious disassembly and re-assembly of precision components saves time, and wear and tear on the machinery.
	After The printing press is ready for setup for the next printing job as soon as the dry ice blasting is completed, without waiting for solvent or water drying time.  The only clean-up is the residue removed from the machinery.
With the dry ice cleaning process, there's no requirement for worker protection from hazardous solvents and no expensive solvent disposal.

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