MARINE CORPS LOGISTICS BASE BARSTOW, Calif. -- In its never ending quest to provide the best service possible to its customers, Maintenance Center Barstow continues to upgrade its facilities to meet its customers' needs in the most efficient and expeditious manner possible.
During the past two years, MCB has opened a new paint and coatings facility, a new welding shop and now a new blasting facility, affectionately labeled "Super Blast."
As far as self-contained booths are concerned, this is the fifth facility which includes north and south blast, plastic blast, baby blast and "the dungeon," according to Russ Lynn, metals and coatings branch head at MCB.
"The dungeon is a blast facility that was built for us back in the early 90s and it was originally intended to be a plastic blast facility only," said Lynn. "We call it the dungeon because when it was originally manufactured it had sub-standard lighting, it was very dark and dingy in there for our operators, and it didn't have the (required) air flow."
At the time the dungeon was built, the people who used the facility most were not included in the original design. With the new blast facility Lynn along with Dave White, sandblast supervisor, and others were involved with the project from the design phase to the final product.
What they ended up with is roughly a 5,000-square-foot, state of the art facility that includes two 1,440 square foot booths, which offers its operators plenty of space to move around comfortably while blasting a large piece of equipment like an Assault Amphibious Vehicle.
Safety features are also built into the facility to protect both the sandblasters and the environment as well.
"It is a very controlled facility," said Lynn. "The filters and dust collectors that we're using run at 99.99 percent efficiency and what's really nice about the facility is that there is a detection system wired into the dust collectors where if any one of the cartridges fails and starts to emit dust into the atmosphere, it shuts itself off."
Dust inside the booth is virtually null and void as well because of the exhaust fans.
"With a room that size we still have the volume inside for operator convenience, upwards of a 150 feet per minute," said White. "They have gone to virtually no dust and nothing inhibiting them from seeing the surface of what they are blasting, even if it's long term.
"If you can see what you're doing you can do more and it is so much more environmentally friendly. You don't have to sit so close to the vehicles now with the additional space. It used to be sometimes the hose was pinned up against your chest while blasting in the smaller bays. Now, with the bigger bays it's just a smooth job all around."
According to Lynn, the smaller bays are what got this project started. The old bays are 32 feet long, by comparison the new facility's bays are 48 feet long, a full third larger.
"There are assets that we could not physically get in the old bays to blast unless it was disassembled," Lynn revealed. "We struggled with that for years. We saw a need for bigger bays years ago and that's when we started."
Just five years ago the Maintenance Center considered its blast operations a bottleneck because its facilities needed overhauling, according to Lynn.
"When items came in it took three weeks to get it done; we had so much stuff in queue," he said.
Now, with the north and south facilities overhauled and the newly constructed Super Blast facility, Lynn said they can't bring in enough work to keep his section busy; the queue time is now one day.
Another reason MCB's blasting operations fell behind was because back then (five years ago) they lagged behind current technology. After going out and researching how advanced sandblasting operations were, Lynn and his crew were able to bring that information back and basically custom design the Maintenance Center's operation and pass that along to the contractor responsible for building the new facility.
"Now we have a 20-year system instead of a seven to ten year system," Dave White added.
An added feature to the bays, which is very rare in the industry, is magnetic separation, said Lynn.
"Anytime you blast something with any type of media you're taking off some of the metal on the substrate. Well, that metal gets mixed in with your grit that grit can now be considered a contaminant. You don't want to blast an aluminum hull with media that has steel in it because there's the possibility of embedding small steel particles into the aluminum causing galvanic or accelerated corrosion in the hull," Lynn explained.
The magnetic separator takes out all the metal impurities and takes out all the dust and sizes the particles for even distribution, thus extending the life of the material, recycling the garnet (blast media) and in the long run saving the Marine Corps some money, he emphasized.
"We have some other creature comforts in Super Blast that you will not find in most booths," said Lynn. "The operators have an emergency stop installed inside the booths. You probably won't find that in one out of 100 booths in the outside world, but we wanted that in there just in case there was a problem."
The facility also has radio controlled cranes, extra large viewing windows for safety, and a 70-ton capacity floor to accommodate a fully loaded tank. It makes its own breathable air, has an air purification system and carbon monoxide alarm detection systems, Lynn revealed.
The cost for this facility, according to Lynn was well over $4.5 million and the project was originally planned in 1999.
"That was my project when I started it in 1999. I approached our engineering department and told them I wanted a whole new blast facility. 'Russ, you'll never live to see it' was their exact answer." Lynn said jokingly.
"We made it just because we didn't take no for an answer, but more importantly was because the Marine Corps needed it and we were able to prove that we really needed it."
Lynn revealed that besides all the equipment and the facilities one of the things that makes a big difference in how the metals and coatings branch operates are its people.
"We have a motivated, well trained workforce and they take pride in what they do. Without them, it doesn't happen," he concluded.