Since 1891, Union Tank Car Company, provides high-quality equipment and comprehensive tank car services to our customers throughout North America. They needed a high production blast room for refurbishment of railcars, focusing on lining and coating.

UTLX facility prior to blast room installation

Tank car linings serve two main functions:

UTLX had an aging wheel machine at one of their facilities in Arkansas that needed to dramatically increase its production, but couldn’t afford to be out of service for a long time.

BlastOne worked with UTLX to replace the old wheel machine—a now out-of-date way of performing surface preparation on railcars—with a new robotic blast room inside the existing facility.

While waiting for the robotic components to arrive, we built the blast room initially for manual blasting. This limited production downtime and had temporary access platforms for operators. Later, we removed these platforms once the robotic components were in operation.

Underfloor Pit Construction process

Rendering Blueprint of Blast Booth Installation

Union Tank Car (UTLX) now has a state-of-the-art robotic blasting facility which gives them a substantial competitive advantage. The cycle time and subsequent cost reduction gives them excellent return on investment, and the quality and consistency of the blast process provide further key advantages.