Dry Ice Cleaning

According to one business that specializes in this, the dry ice is frozen into tiny pellets that disintegrate upon impact. I would have thought that would provide minimal cleaning but it looks pretty interesting.
 
The dry ice pellets act like a blasting media material and are soft enough: They begin to disintegrate upon contact metal and heat generated by impact.
 
We contract out for this on large forge presses during every rebuild.
The presses are some of the dirtiest, greasiest, baked on gunkiest machines I have ever encountered.
The dry ice blasting makes them look almost like new and saves hundreds of hours versus sending a crew of guys to climb around on the equipment to clean manually.

Highly recommended for the right job or environment but likely way overpriced for automotive type applications.
 
Ventilation is extremely important when using this process. Dry ice evaporates into carbon dioxide and will displace the oxygen. It's heavier than air so it's use near a pit in a shop or in an enclosed space can be fatal.
How does that work anyway? Isn't that like holding your breath? You know you're not getting air and something is wrong. It's not instantaneous so you have time to react and get out of the area.
 
How does that work anyway? Isn't that like holding your breath? You know you're not getting air and something is wrong. It's not instantaneous so you have time to react and get out of the area.
Slowly breathing CO2 essentially gets you high, and you don’t know that you’re being asphyxiated.
 
When I worked at a John Deere plant they did this when the reconfigured an area or line to get all the gunk off the building before they repainted it. The accumulation of welding fumes made the white structure dingy brown in a couple of years.
 
They used this method back in the 1990's at the paper mill I worked at. Running, open frame, synchronous motors. Yes I said running motors.
 
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