Development of a Camera for Abrasive Blasting

Abrasive blasting is often used to clean work pieces. During the process an abrasive medium is propelled with compressed air toward a given surface. Common abrasives are sand, glass beads, steel or corundum. For safety reasons the blasting process is carried out in closed blast cabinets or rooms. Abrasives and cut off material are filling the air so that the visibility is limited. Quality assurance and safety monitoring of workers in blast rooms are therefore difficult which is essential e. g. in atomic power plant demolition. This article describes the development and test of a camera to improve this situation. Compressed air flows through the camera housing to keep particles away from the lens. The air flow was optimized by computational fluid dynamics. A prototype was made by 3D printing and tested in an blast cabinet.