Glass Bead Blasting for Stainless Steel Castings

Glass bead blasting is a decorative surface treatment of components made of stainless steel casting, in which the blasting media is glass bead.

This type of surface finish produces a much smoother and brighter finish of stainless steel castings than shot blasting. Glass bead blasting produces a clean, bright, peened, satin finish, without dimensional change of the cast stainless steel parts. They can be recycled approximately 30 times. Chemically inert and environmentally friendly, glass bead blasting is an acceptable method of cleaning or surface finishing for components after stainless steel casting.



Glass bead blasting is available to treat different sizes of stainless steel castings. Glass beads are primarily used in blasting cabinets for honing, polishing, peening, finishing, removing light burrs, and cleaning most light foreign matter. For delicate thin-walled stainless steel castings, peening with glass bead abrasive material provides the right balance of stress relief without over-stressing and causing damage of stainless steel casting.

Glass Bead Blasting vs Shot Blasting for Stainless Steel Castings

When glass bead blasting a surface in order to clean or strip it, tiny glass beads are forced on to stainless steel castings under lower air pressure than sand blasting. Additionally, blasting with glass beads is a slower process than sand blasting but is much gentler on the stainless steel castings and effectively strips it without causing damage to the part itself. This leads to a fresh, shiny and more polished appearance.

Shot blasting is a blasting process that smooths the surface of stainless steel castings by glass bead media. Under the workforce of shot blasting machine, the surface of stainless steel castings can be smooth very quickly, normally 25-30 minutes.

Differences Between Glass Bead Blasting and Shot Blasting

• Process: Glass bead blasting is operated one by one, and is handled by worker. While shot blasting is operated by machine can blast hundreds of pieces at a time.
• Cost: The cost of glass bead blasting is much higher than that of shot blasting.
• Surface Finish: Glass bead blasting can creat much smoother and brighter surface finish for stainless steel castings.

CFS Stainless Steel Foundry can deal with glass bead blasting for different types of stainless steel castings. Besides glass bead blasting, we can also provide other surface finishes, such as shot blasting, electropolishing, mirror polishing, etc. If you have any inquiry on stainless steel casting, pls feel free to contact us.