CNC Plasma Cutting
CNC Plasma Cutting is now available in Bendigo with Custom Shade Solution's acquisition of the latest cutting table from PlasmaCam in the US. This cutter and table enables them to offer the highest possible quality and precision at much lower cost than hand or laser cutting. Custom Shade Soulutions can cut shapes in steel to 32mm thickness in sheet sizes of 3000mm x 1500mm as a batch of one, hundres and even thousands. Work can be commissioned from Autocad files either supplied by the client or generated inhouse. They are also able to scan artwork or designs if you lack digital files for architectural panels or sculptures. So if you currently send work out of Bendigo, pay for laser cutting or hand cut steel components call Mark Gronow and ask them to cut a sample for you.
  Sand Blasting
Starting with the top left picture the four pictures represent grades "C", "D", "A", and "B". In the blasting industry, price sometimes becomes the single largest factor in whether a company wins a bid or loses a job to the competition. It is therefore understandable that most sandblasting companies price their work based on grades "D", and "C". These grades of quality leave much to be desired, however. Commonly referred to as a commercial blast, these grades don't come close to the quality standards of a white metal blast. In the end there is no way to tell what's under your paint, primer or powder-coating until the stuff starts peeling, chipping, or rusting straight through the coating. Then of coarse, it's to late to worry about.
It is an established fact that the better the grade of blasting you obtain, the longer the coating you apply is going to last. It's all about adhesion, or lack there of. A glossy surface will provide less surface area at the substrate level than a dull or flat matte finish. By abrading the surface of a substrate with blasting, one creates a greater amount of surface area and the surface becomes more and more dull. During sandblasting operations, metal removal begins once the paint or other coating is removed. This is the process at work in abrasive blasting with silicon carbide, aluminum oxide, silica sand, coal slag, copper slag, bar-shot, steel grit, crushed glass, garnet, and many other angular grits used in sandblasting.
All the above can provide a white metal grade "A" finish on metals. Glass beads, walnut shell, corn cob grit, plastic medias, and numerous other mildly abrasive and nonabrasive medias will remove coatings but will most likely not be capable of obtaining white metal finishes in all cases. They simply are not designed to remove medium to heavy corrosion. They all have their proper use and we use many of them for specialized surface preparations. However, a white metal finish will produce better adhesion between substrate and coating and thus, increase longevity.
Custom Shades prefers to blast everything to a white metal or near white metal surface unless a customer demands a lower quality or desires a lower price. Obviously time and price will be commensurate with the quality of any job. The typical difference between a commercial and white metal blast can be as much as double the cost, especially when encountering mill scale as pictured here or other heavy pitted rust. The choice is yours to make, but if you don't specifically demand white metal you're probably receiving a commercial blast and that can be the most costly job of all.  
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