overview of our processes

Welcome to our technical section

Here at AFCO, we have a wide variety of services to meet your needs. Ranging from advanced aerospace shot peening, airless blasting and deflashing to stripping and automotive chassis refinishing. Equipped with a wide variety of machines and experienced manpower, we can handle large volumes of small parts to short runs on larger pieces. If the job requirements that you are in need of are not listed here, feel free to contact us and we'll see what we can do to accommodate your needs.

Technical details on our services

AFCO would like to assist you with any questions you may have on our processes. Below you will find links to technical explanations for the services we provide. The 'technical' links are to describe the general nature of what the process is, not to explain our specific capabilities. Please visit the available services section for general capabilities or use the specific 'services' links and the 'samples' links for work examples.

- shot peening

Technical•Services•Samples
Shot peening is used for prestressing of material by mechanical working to obtain improved strength, surface finish and hardness, better fatigue characterisitics, stop fretting and galling, remove porosity and improve corrosion resistance.

- glass bead peening

Technical•Services•Samples
Glass bead peening is used to clean parts affected by welding, heat treatments, machining and storage. Also used to burnish and equalize surfaces of various materials, to enhance endurance of tooling and edge life, and is extensively used for stripping surface layers, such as anodizing, corrosion, and paint or other similar coatings.

- shot peen forming

Technical•Services•Samples
Shot peen forming is a dieless process performed at room temperature to produce a convex or concave shapes in material. This process has the ability to accurately produce smooth curvatures or complex compound uni- or multi-axial curvatures on the part. Parts may be unstressed and rely solely on the compressive affects for forming or lightly pre-stressed on a fixture during peening.

- abrasive blasting

Technical•Services•Samples
Abrasive blasting is the use of abrasive material accelerated by air or mechanical means then directed at the work piece to clean, strip, or texturize a material such as metal, plastic, glass, or masonry. Media may be air blown, such as in a blasting cabinet and large blasting rooms, or throw mechanically with a blating wheel for large volumes of parts.

- rubber deflashing

Technical•Services•Samples
Cryogenic high speed shot blast deflashing is a process used by the rubber industry to remove flash from molded rubber parts. The process uses liquid nitrogen, high speed rotation and media in varying combinations to remove the flash in a highly precise, economical and expedient manner. This process is exceptionally good at removing the inner dimensional and complex flash that cannot be removed by any other method.

- plastic deflashing

Technical•Services•Samples
The plastic deflashing process is the removal of flash or rind left on plastic moldings by spaces between mold cavity edges, the sprew and runners, or any other unwanted material from the molding process. Methods include tumbling or blast finishing, the cryogenic method chilled by a coolant such as liquid nitrogen, or a combination of these methods.

- airless blasting

Technical•Services•Samples
Airless blasting is a rapid, economical, highly adaptable and efficient way of removing surface impurities by means of throwing metal shot or grit against the work piece. Many uses including removing forging and annealing scale, removing welding spatter on fabricated parts, cleaning and preparing metal surfaces for plating, galvanizing, enameling, rubberizing, and other coatings, together with a multitude of other blast cleaning operations, all achieved with high efficiency and unusual economy. Airless blasting is typically used in large blasters when a volume of media is required on a large volume of parts.

For more information on shot peening and abrasive blasting, feel free to contact us at any time. For details on our specific capabilities, please visit the services section.