Glass Abrasives

What Are Glass Abrasives?

Glass abrasives use recycled, crushed glass as a blasting medium. With sharp or rounded features, glass abrasives can clear your surface without causing extra material damage. At Finishing Systems, we provide glass impact beads and crushed glass media.

Glass Impact Beads

With a rounded surface, these glass impact beads are great for a variety of jobs, including:

• Metal cleaning
• Surface finishing
• Peening
• Deburring

Use these impact beads for clearing paint or rust without decreasing your material or structure’s impact tolerance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crushed Glass Media

Used for more aggressive surfacing, crushed glass media has varying sizes and sharp edges for removing heavy coatings such as:

• Epoxies
• Paints
• Vinyl
• Alkyds

Choose coarse, medium, fine or extra-fine based on your project’s toughness.

Advantages of Using Glass Abrasives

Glass abrasives offer a range of benefits, and they could be an excellent choice for your abrasion needs. The advantages of these solutions include:

• Safety: Glass abrasives are nontoxic and chemically inert. They also have no free silica, so you won’t breathe in any harmful chemicals during the abrasion process.
• Recycled materials: This medium consists of 100% recycled glass, so it’s economical and environmentally safe to dispose of.
• A bright finish: Glass leaves a clean, bright finish on metals. Plus, its low particle embedment leads to a whiter finish.
• Low weight: This medium is significantly lighter than other abrasives, so you’ll use less material for the job and save money in both purchase and disposal.

When Are Glass Abrasives the Right Choice?

With the availability of different coarseness levels in our crushed glass media along with the general advantages of glass, these abrasives can be used for various surfacing projects. Our impact beads are best used for metal surfaces because they excel in peening and deburring. They’re also helpful for frosting and etching glass.

Crushed glass media can cover a variety of projects thanks to its different coarseness levels. A finer or medium grain is great for cleaning and polishing for a bright white finish. With coarse grain, you can clean precast concrete and heavy steel materials, such as tanks and bridges. You can also use it for projects that require a deeper profile.

If you have an exceedingly tough material, glass abrasion may not be the best method, as it will take more time. For most projects, however, glass media will get the job done in an affordable and environmentally friendly way.