50% reduction in cycle time at Fudike with blast wheel upgrade

Spanish foundry switches 40-year-old machine to Wheelabrator’s TITAN 15 Smart wheels

Fudike, an iron foundry based in Ibarra, Northern Spain, has transformed the performance of its non-Wheelabrator hanger-type shot blast machine by upgrading to our TITAN 15 Smart  blast wheels. A full blast cycle now takes 5 minutes instead of 11, and the team are getting 2300 blasting hours out of a single set of wheel blades – more than triple the blade life of the previous wheels.

 

Fudike specializes in brake discs for railway applications, which are desanded and cleaned in a 1985 hanger-type machine with three indirect-drive 11kW blast wheels. Unhappy with its 670 blasting hours of wear parts life and 11-minute blast cycle, the Fudike team was looking for an upgrade that would significantly improve both – unlocking extra production capacity and savings on running costs.

Francisco Lusinchi, our expert for equipment modernization programs (EMPs) in Spain, explains what happened next: “The Fudike team quickly zeroed in on our TITAN 15 Smart wheel, a direct-drive blast wheel with cast wear parts for lighter-duty foundry applications - that is, for motor powers under 22kW. Most of our customers want us to carry out the upgrades, but the team at Fudike really know their stuff. They wanted to do the conversion, but they also wanted to test it first. So they bought one TITAN 15 Smart from us and installed it themselves – no mean feat, considering they were converting from indirect to direct drive!”


Trial run with instant impact

The Fudike team quickly saw the impact of the upgrade. Even with just one blast wheel converted to TITAN 15 Smart, the cycle time dropped from 11 to 8 minutes. 

Backed by this immediate result, Fudike bought and installed the remaining two blast wheels and has been running with the upgraded set-up since February 2024. Not only can the machine now run more than three times longer without exchanging the blades, when they do need changing, it only takes 30 minutes per wheel instead of an hour. 

 

 

“Nothing determines the economics of wheelblast processes like the wheels on the machine. The wheels themselves and the wear parts that go in them are not a cost, they are a means of saving a lot of money. In abrasive, energy, man hours. As the Fudike team have seen, investing in your wheels is worth it.”

- Francisco Lusinchi, equipment modernization expert at Wheelabrator

“Together with the much faster blast cycles, the new blast wheels have delivered a complete step change in performance for our shot blast operations. The additional headroom in capacity it’s giving us is one thing – we can double production or be done in half the time. But it’s the impact on running costs that is truly incredible. The fast cycles mean we’re running the machine less than half the time for the same output. And yet the parts give us triple the blasting hours. The new blast wheels have long paid for themselves."

- Juan Martija, in charge of maintenance at Fudike

Wheel blast economics

The short payback time on this blast wheel upgrade shows the enormous impact blast wheels have on the running costs of wheelblast processes. That’s why we have invested significantly in our blast wheel portfolio to offer customers cost-optimized solutions that deliver maximum operational benefits for the lowest costs – all matched to the shot blasting task at hand, and the operating environment it’s in.

The TITAN 15 Smart was born from this thinking – a wheel that is suitable for foundry environments and offers exceptional durability for lighter-duty applications, as well as being incredibly easy to look after. 

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