Sioux Rubber & Urethane Blog

Custom Spray Urethane - Cleaning Beets and Beating Abrasion

Posted by Sioux Rubber & Urethane Team on Feb 5, 2015 9:57:29 AM

Beet Roller spray urethane   Urethane Spray Beet Roller  DSCN1791

Sioux Rubber & Urethane specializes in protecting your equipment from abrasion, impact and corrosion.  No matter how unique your part or problem is we can usually come up with a solution.  In most cases with a spray urethane application if we can get it through the door we can coat it.  And we have big doors!

We were recently contacted by a sugar factory that processed sugar beets with a fairly substantial abrasion issue.  They explained their process for the initial cleaning of the sugar beets when they arrive at their factory.  Beets are brought in from the fields coated with dirt, sand and even at times some undesirable insects.  The beets are put into a water filled trough and agitated with this “Beet Beater” to remove all the foreign substances.  The problem is in that the dirt and sand are agitated as well creating a type of slurry compound that was extremely abrasive to the agitator wearing away at its steel structure.

Sand slurry abrasion……no problem, we do this for a living!  They sent us a drawing of the beat beater and OH MY!  It looked like an attachment to Optimus Prime in the latest Transformers movie!  Once we got past the “wow factor” we started to devise our plan to get a ¼” coating on this large very unique part.

The part arrived just before the Christmas holiday and it was much more impressive in person than it was on paper.  The excitement level of the spray urethane crew went through the roof.  These guys live for a challenge!  At 30 feet long and 4,500 pounds with arms protruding everywhere this thing was going to be fun just to get off of the truck.

The beet beater soon had a custom spinning cradle from our in house fabrication department, was blasted and primed.  Our spayed urethane comes out of the gun at 3,600 psi and goes on in layers of around 0.02”.  It was an entire day of just spraying to coat this monster but in the end our customer had the solution to their unique abrasion issue.

This is a great example of what Sioux Rubber & Urethane has to offer and is capable of.  Our knowledgeable and experienced staff is up for almost any challenge no matter how large or small.  We would be happy to answer any questions you may have on this project or on any other impact, abrasion or corrosion issues you have.

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