The Main Difference Between Shot Peening and Shot Blasting.

If you are in the metal industry or the manufacturing sector, then you may have heard about shot blasting or shot peening. Both these processes are done to prepare metal sheets or workpieces for further processing. Let us understand what these processes are and the main differences between the two.

What is the shot blasting process?

Metal parts that are manufactured, are not utilised directly when they came out of the factory floor. They need powder coating, welding work, or a layer of paint before they are soldin the market. However, to do these, the surface of the metal part should be clean of any foreign element. In the shot blasting process, you can quickly remove foreign particles like oil, earth, metal oxides, plant scale to make the surface of the metal smooth.

How does this process work?

In this process,a high-pressure stream of abrasive media like stainless steel round cut wire shot, glass beads, copper shots, aluminium cut wire shots and other such media are thrown against the metal part. The end product of this process will depend entirely on the size, shape, and thickness of the shots that you have used. If you want to aggressively clean the surface of hard metal, then you use copper shots, aluminum cut wire shots and steel. However, if you want to clean a surface that is not very hard, then you can use glass media, silica sand, sodium bicarbonate, and so on.

What is shot peening?

While shot blasting is used to clean the surface of any hard material of any foreign players like grease, paint, or rust, in short peening is done to fortify the material properties of the metal surface through applying pressure. In this process, the outside layer of compressive pressure is put in place to build its solidarity. To do this, the metallic surface which needs to be prepared is continuously hit with a ball-peen hammer. While earlier it was done manually, but in today’s time in the scope of the huge fabricating setting, the mechanical shot peening process is widely used to do the job.

How does this process work?

In the shot peening process,a stream of material is bombarded on the surface of the metal sheet. While it is similar to the shot blasting process, the result is a bit different. While in the shot blasting process the abrasive media are used to make the surface smooth, in the shot peening process the result is to make the metal part more grounded so that it becomes impervious to breaks, erosion weariness. The shot peening process can also be used to give the metal piece a finished surface depending upon how this process is applied. The main media used in this process include glass shots as well as steel to reinforce the metallic parts of a workpiece.

Therefore, you can see that both the shot peening as well as shot blasting process are basic, yet important processes in any metal assembling workplace.

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More Resources:

- The Main Difference Between Dry and Wet Blasting.

- The latest method of abrasive blasting.

- Why shot blasting is best for the metal finish?

- Is shot blasting the ideal way to clean steel surfaces?