Installation Considerations for an Auger & Bucket Elevator Media Reclaim System

We completed a blast room installation that required two side-by-side 6 cu ft blast machines; the customer wanted to have two guys blasting at once.

Two blast machines running at the same time means a lot of media is needed to feed them – hence, we designed and built a custom platform over the machines to hold a 50 cu ft storage hopper (Figure 1).

The blast room design also incorporated a mechanical media reclaim system consisting of a bucket elevator, rotary drum separator/airwash, and 15’ auger (Figure 2).

Mechanical reclaim systems like this one are most commonly used with steel grit/shot or aluminum oxide as these media are quite heavy and difficult to reclaim through vacuum systems, or applications requiring high production rates.

How a mechanical reclaim system works – simplified

The media is manually swept into the auger inside the blast room. The auger moves the media to the bucket elevator, which carries the media to the rotary drum separator/airwash cleaner at the top, where it’s then dumped back into the hopper and goes back out through the blast machines.

Design considerations

Ceiling height – When designing a blast room, ceiling height is of critical importance because of ducting from the room to the dust collector.

For this installation, we also had to account for the height of the maintenance platform, storage hopper, and bucket elevator. We wanted to leave plenty of room for someone to walk around comfortably on the platform.

Augur – Figure 2 shows the finished Augur pit, which extends 15’ from the Elevator pit into the blast room. Notice the metal trough were the media will be manually swept in.

Both the Auger pit and the Elevator pit are installed before installation can begin. You can see the finished Auger trough and its location in the blast room in Figure 3.

Elevator pit – The pit for the bucket elevator needed to be over 4′ deep to accommodate the auger being able to dump into it. Overall pit size for this installation is 5’5” L x 6’4” W x 4’4” deep.

The pit itself is large enough to allow maintenance access to service the bucket elevator (Figure 4). The access plate (bolted on) is easily removed to clean and grease the motors. Repairing pulleys and buckets is also easy.

When installing a recessed pit, the only design consideration is ensuring nothing is buried where the pit will be located, such as utilities. Titan provides detailed drawings; customers are responsible for installing the pit according to Titan specs.

This blast room is one of the many custom jobs Titan designs, fabricates, and installs on a regular basis.

If you need a custom blast room to solve your unique challenge, contact us. You’ll talk directly with one of our expert blast room engineers – no middlemen involved!