Blast Pro Pics And Info

BLASTPRO

Great a forum for this line of work, what more could I ask for! My company is named Blast Pro, we are located in Mandan N.D. We specialize in industrial tank blasting/coatings, wood siding refinishing, new and old industrial steel blasting/coatings, dry ice blasting, portable powder coatings, fire damage/mold clean up and pressure washing.

For portable blasting equipment we have a 6.5 cube pot, 185 Sullair portable compressor, Pro Blast soda pot, Key 8 ton pot and an 875 Ingersoll Rand compressor. Our International diesel flat bed hauls the bigger equipment and our other 2 box trucks haul the rest.

We consider the specialty equipment to be our Cold Jet dry ice blasting aero 45 machine and our Xiom 1000 and 5000 portable powder coating system with portable gas compressor.

Pressure washing is handled by both our tandem axle trailer unit made up of dual 250 gallon water tanks, Tuff 4200 psi hot cold pressure washer, Hydro tek concrete floor cleaner. Our 1.5 ton flat bed Chevy is equiped with a Hotsy 3,800 psi hot cold machine with a 450 gallon tank.

Our inside equipment consists of a large Binks paint booth, Schmidt reclaim system, Schmidt vaccum recovery system, Schmidt 6.5 cube blaster with a 200cfm Ingersoll Rand rotory screw compressor driving it.

We do a bit of everything and anything. We have blasted in 100+ weather and 45- below weather, not to much suprises us. We love to travel and work where and when we can. The best equipment and crew in the business we beleive. Sub work welcomed with open arms. We have been around for 2 years and each year seems to get better! More equipment, more invoicing, more bills haha its a vicious circle sometimes but we love it! Thanks. I will try to post a few pics a little later.

Blast&Coat

welcome blast. I also own the xiom 1000 and 5000 systems and have been doing lots of work with them but we are looking to rev up our sand blasting work even more. Could you tell me the things you have been blasting and coating or just coating?
Sounds like we operate towards the exact same market. I look forward to hearing your stories and helping each other out maybe.
Check out some of my other pposts about the things we have been coating.

CO2Solutions

Cool, another guy on here that also does Dry Ice Blasting. Do you complete much DIB projects? and what type of work?

Welcome.

BLASTPRO

I have alot invested into both the dry ice and the powder coating but neither have been very worth while to date. We haven't really done alot of marketing on either service as we have been busy with tanks and industrial steel lately. The steel is starting to slow and we are now more geared up to market both services. Both services are a tough sell since almost no one knows anything about either of them. Customer education and understand has been our biggest obstacle. What have you guys seen and tried that works, we are hoping we can turn both of these units around fast and start making a little return on our large investment.

CO2Solutions

I was in the 'same boat' as you, half the battle is education of the benefits of DIB in comparison to old ways of cleaning methods. I live in a small town with a decent sized manufacturing sector, much time was spent educating the 'old boys' club. Most of my work comes from mould remediation - I now tend to market the disaster restoration side. Of course I got certified as a mould remediation technian first.

Blast&Coat

here is my post from another thread about some of the things we have done...Just think every single thing you drive by everyday that has rust one it, and many things that you sand blast if people are just going to paint them, offer the powder coating as a more durable option.


Well like I said Im all for anyone buying anything second hand, I am no sales person for xiom by any means. But they are still an R&D company and ANDY the president will tell you that in a heartbeat. A couple mag adds doesnt sell the system by any means.
That being said our system paid for itself within 6 months.
I would not have spent a half of mil to produce it myself but I wouldnt spend 50 million to produce a pontiac aztek for 1 year either.
nonetheless any equipment that pays for itself in 6 months (18 months since our purchase) is worth the price.
Blastpro what kind of things do you blast so much of? I'm sure some of them are candidates. Since aquiring the system we have sprayed, trailers, many many car frames, horse stalls, swimming pools, stairwells, decks, fences, boat bottoms, house boat tops, guardrails, even sprayed all the toilet seats with the glow in the dark in a retirement home, a large order of snow plows, we just recently started spraying some truck beds, etc..
Not to mention the real money is going to come when we are able to spray the antimicrobial spray in hospital, schools, and restuarants just to name a few.
Our very first advertisement was in a local antique car trader mag. The fact that we could come on site, blast and powder coat a frame in less tha 3-4 hours was like a god send for these shops that had to hual frames all over and hand sand or send bodies or frames off somewhere to get done. Im sure they still charged their customer the exact same and came out making mroe mney and doing less work for them. Just one thing we have used and they almost always have a lot fo work whether it be frames bodies or other odd stuff that pays the bills.
That being said, if you blast 24/7 what are some of the things you blast that keep you busy so much? We are looking to add just a blast unit to out flet and want to load up on things to keep my guys busy!

CO2Solutions

Now, this is something I know very little about as I'm not 'in' the coating industry...yet...but what are the advantages of powder coating over other types of paint?
I was just reading up on xiom systems...very cool...

BLASTPRO

We have a few bigger contracts with surrounding steel manufacturing companies. The peices we handle will range in size from smaller ibeam sections to 8k pounds upright platform sections. All of this steel has already been speced out for zinc coating which we spray via airless sprayer in our shop. The tanks we blast and coat will be anywhere from 15ft high 30 ft diameter to as big as you can imagine, also coated via airless sprayer. This work has kept us very busy up until this point. When I first bought into this business we started with 1 compressor and 2 small blasters with a shop and a fork lift. Both my partner and I decided to invest the money right away to have a full range of services with the understanding that we might not be able to get to all of them right away as work would dictate. We bought the cold jet new and the xiom 1000 used but the 5000 gun new from xiom. We had one of our foreman travel to newyork for the training, he has since quit (lucky us) and now we dont have anyone trained to use it. We kicked around the idea of paying the 3k to have an xiom tech come out and train our entire staff on its fuctions. We are about to finish our last contract with a local steel company, then we plan to devote the right time to it.

Blast&Coat

I dont think I would pay the 3 grand for anyone to come out just to show you how to use it. If you have the users manual it is very detailed and if not im sure xiom could send you one. The only thing I would pay for is if they can give you some leads on some work
I assume the tanks you are spraying are new, ever thought of finding out who there customers are the might be buying those tanks to replace old ones? And maybe getting to them first to offer onsite blasting and coating?
We have spoke with people like this who can save a considerable amount of money getting a tank redone instead of having someone removie it and replace it with a new one. Even if a company is not ready to replace or refinish it would be worth it to drop your name to them before they do.
That being said, any sandblaster thinks money when they see rust, the best angle is rust eventually affects quality and look sbad forthe company. blast and powder coat is your solution to this. Sure you can paint it, but ill already be here to blast and my coat will last 10 times longer than your paint job. u would have to have it blased and coated 3-5 times before mine ever needed anything if ever in your lifetime.
Just a thought.
Xiom needs to spend some money helping there customers ind niche markets to makemoney instead of just handing out machines and letting the customers do the r&d if you ask me. It will rarely be a business people will come to you for unless they are educated like you said.
If someone calls and needs a car frame done say, I can come to you and spray it, it might cost a little extra but save you the hassle of bringing it to me and then coming to pick it up, and its done instantly. To our customers especially the ones we blast first it saves them weeks of time.

gran_national

Blastpro, how long have you been in the business? Us small-timers like to soak up all of the information possible from you guys who "made it".

BLASTPRO

I got into the business about 9 months ago, at that time the business was less than a year old but it didnt have even 20% of the equipment or work that it has now. I don't know if I would be considered a success story just yet, we have our trials and tribulations just like everyone else and there are months when even payroll or rent is tough but our goal is there and we have spent the money to get us there all we need now is the work and a little luck. Breakdowns and downtime are our biggest enemy, with the specialized equipment we have if something breaks it puts us down for days sometimes. We took an aggresive approach and invested alot right out of the gates, its time to start working it to make a payback.

CO2Solutions

How did you market your business in the beginning? do you have a website set up?

plazaman

im glad to hear everyones success. But mined has failed. i really really wish i could do more with it, so im basically going to sell and walk .

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Westchester Remodeling Contractor
Hartsdale Remodeling Contractor
Ardsley Remodeling Contractor

painter213

Blast Pro, What type of surface prep do you need for your powder coatings on Steel or Concrete?

__________________
Benny Abbott
Abbott Consulting and Coating Inspections
E-Mail: babbott@abbottcoatinginspections.com
Phone: (205-717-0292)

Blast&Coat

plazaman, are you saying you are selling a xiom system? Have you tried to find some of the work mentioned if so what problems have you had?

Blast&Coat

We blast or rough up pretty much everything we coat even if its just a quick swipe to give us some good anchors for the powder. We can usually spray a thick enough coat to cover up any prep anchors and still create a smoth shine finish.

BLASTPRO

Im sorry your getting out of the business it can be tough at sometimes and if the area isn't condusive to your business needs no amount of marketing or management will help.



As Blast & Coat said just about every surface is blasted to ensure a proper anchor pattern, this can be dictated by company preference or customer specs. Many steel surfaces we blast have different blast specs to acheive different mills or anchor, sp6 brush blast is common but sometimes we have to blast to a white steel with no impurities.

We live in a friendly small community that fortunatly hasn't seen the down turn in the economy that other states have seen around the country, building is up, home values are up and the energy and agriculture doesn't hurt. Marketing is handled door to door or on the phone if needed. Our website is in the works but by no means is it done. We have a small ad in the yellowbook but no real budget for anything else. We have had enough work to keep us consistantly busy and when there is down time its used for repairs or some time off. Up until last week we were running 24hrs a day for 26 days to keep up with the steel that we were working with. 3 guys per shift 12hr days.

Blast&Coat

BlastPro do you have a powdercoating oven as well, I assumed you did for the steel work you were doing or were you just blasting it and priming it. We have explored the possibility of getting an oven and setting up a shop as we currently do all our work completely mobile with my home office and cell phone being all the space I need to conduct the business.
I usually insist on just coming to the customer, and usually drag my rig along. They are usually very interested in the set up of the equipment and many times I will just end up doing the job right there!
Glad to hear you have had so much work lately! I agree if you are not in the right market though no amount of marketing will fix it. But I know no matter the economy, things will always rust, thigns will always need new paint and things outside will always need a better weatherproofed coating. Because if anything inthese times people want things to last longer, and a good blast job followed with a good coat job will absolutly do that. I am going to spray some wood tomorrow morning like a guy has on his deck, wood is a weird thing because its breaths and expands etc..But I have done a fence and it looks just like the day we did it. But unless I can get to every inch of his deck I don't know that I will be able to keep moisture out of it which of course would be the death of the coating supposedly xiom has a new wood formula, but that doesnt really help me to be able to cover every inch of it.
Did you dig out the xiom manual to play with the system yet? Heck ill fly out for 2K to help you with it

Blast&Coat

CO2Solutions

Blast&Coat, do you have a larger picture? please explain what that unit is exactly...obviously there's a compressor in the center, are those just storage units on either side?

Plazaman, I'm sorry to hear about the state of your business - hopefully things work out for you.