Since one year, manufacturers of blasting equipment organise their common activities for the sector in the VDMA working group Blasting Technology (founded October 7th 2009). "Within one year a community has grown, which works on current topics with decisiveness and competence" remarks Ulf Kapitza (AGTOS), speaker of the working group. "The community of member companies has committed itself to a high workload with topics from technical regulation and strategic marketing" confirms Dr. Martin Riester from VDMA Surface Technology, coordinator of the Blasting Technology activities.
Members of the working group are manufacturers of machinery and components for pressurized air-, wheel-, dry-ice- and pressurized liquid blasting technology. The VDMA Blasting Technology workgroup has divided its activities into two subgroups for "Technology" and "Strategic Marketing". These two will be supplemented by a new subgroup for dry-ice blasting technology.
After at first focussing on the development of the specification VDMA 24379 "blasting technology – applications, procedures and machinery" the worktopics are considerably expanded today. Current activities comprise:
- Finalization of the published draft for VDMA24379
- Development of a multilingual product directory for blasting technology according to VDMA24379
- Development of a general risk assessment and definition of requirements for fire- and explosion protection for pressurized air- and wheel-blasting machinery
- Development of reference models for the forecast of life cycle costs of pressurized air-, wheel-, dry-ice- and pressurized liquid blasting technology
- Organization of a German participation at Steelfab 2011 (Sharjah, UAE) and integration into the other 5 international German participations of VDMA Surface Treatment Technology in Russia (2x), Turkey, China and India
- Definition of safety requirements for construction and use of dry-ice blasting technology
- Development of a service directory for dry-ice blasting technology
The activities of the VDMA working group Blasting Technology are driven by the following 15 VDMA member companies:
- AGTOS Gesellschaft für technische Oberflächensysteme mbH
- Alfred Kärcher GmbH & Co. KG
- DISA Industrie AG
- Friedrich Goldmann GmbH & Co. KG
- Herding Filtertechnik GmbH
- HGH GmbH & C. KG
- Keller Lufttechnik GmbH & Co. KG
- Konrad Rump Oberflächentechnik GmbH
- Linde AG
- Paul Auer GmbH
- Piller Entgrattechnik GmbH
- Sapi GmbH
- Venjakob Maschinenbau GmbH & Co. KG
- V+S Vogel & Schemmann Maschinen GmbH
- Wheelabrator Group GmbH