Roll Up Your Sleeves

Plastic media blasting, available for the past year and a half, employs "a malleable plastic media that can fold, bend, bounce back and be recycled," says Bob Temple, CEO, Absolutely Micro*Clean International. Average life cycle for the media is 120 cleanings.

Once the roll is positioned on a centering unit within a cabinet, a computer-driven gun applies a medium pressure, dry blast of the media. Plastic bead blasting can currently clean 1,200 line screens without wear, and has undergone testing for higher line screens. A fourth-generation blend of the plastic media, Micro*Clean IV, uses a "sharper bite" to cut cleaning time in half—about ten minutes for small, narrow-web rolls, and 30 to 45 minutes for wide-web rolls. Narrow-web plastic media systems can run about $13,000, while a wide-web system is around $28,000.