Hollow glass beads are a new type of material synthesized from metal oxides such as silica, magnesium oxide, calcium oxide, natrium oxide and aluminum oxide.
Hollow Glass Beads
What Are Bead Blasting’s Applications?
| Aerospace industry | Remove rust and paint from mechanical components to remove knife marks. |
| Remove scratches on the rubber | Reflective paint for roads |
| Scratch treatment on the surface of stainless steel. | |
| Foundry industry; | Pre processing in the electroplating industry. |
| Semiconductor Industry | Crafts for exterior decoration |
Hollow Glass Beads
1) Advantages
Hollow glass beads have tiny size and smooth surface, it has the low density characteristics of light mass and large volume.
When hollow bead are used as filling materials, its low density characteristics can replace and save the use of production resin, effectively reducing the load of the product and the production cost of fillers.
Hollow beads are physically characterized by a hollow spherical structure, which makes its flowability much higher than that of flakes and irregularly shaped filler materials, and it has excellent flowability.
From another point of view, hollow glass bead are isotropic, and will not cause inconsistent shrinkage in different parts due to different orientations.
This property guarantees the shrinkage of the size and model of the produced products at the same time, and avoids warping of the appearance, so that the produced products have excellent stability.
The interior of hollow glass beads is filled with a thin gas that makes it sound and heat resistant.
Therefore, hollow glass bead are ideal fillers for all kinds of thermal and acoustic insulation products, which can protect the products from thermal shock due to rapid alternation between rapid heat and cold conditions;
hollow glass bead can also be used as an additive matrix uniformly dispersed in the composite material to improve the composite material’s specific strength value and heat resistance.
Hollow glass bead have high specific resistance, low water and oil absorption, and can be widely used in the production of cable insulation materials or for filling polyester, epoxy resin, polyurethane and other thermosetting thermoplastic resins, by reducing the amount of filler resins to reduce the viscosity, and improve the production of maneuvering conditions, and greatly improve the production efficiency.
Size of glass beads for blasting
Model of Bead blasting glass | Sieve Size (mesh) | Particle Size Range(μm) |
WSL17L# | 20~40 | 425 ~ 850 |
WSL 18L# | 30~40 | 425 ~ 600 |
WSL 19L# | 40~60 | 300 ~ 425 |
WSL 20L# | 60~100 | 150 ~ 300 |
WSL 21L# | 70~140 | 106 ~ 212 |
WSL 22L# | 100~140 | 106 ~ 150 |
WSL 23L# | 100~200 | 75 ~ 150 |
WSL 24L# | 140~200 | 75 ~ 106 |
WSL 25L# | 140~270 | 53 ~ 106 |
WSL 26L# | 200~325 | 45 ~ 75 |
Specification of Bead blasting glass
| Specific gravity | 2.4-2.6 g/m3 |
| Stacking density | 1.5g/cm3 |
| Type | Blasting / Shot Peening Media |
| Spherical | |
| Rockwell hardness: | 46HRC |
| Mohs | 6-7 |
| Round rate | 80% |
| Melting point | 710-730 ℃ |
| Index of refraction | 1.5—1.6 |
2）Application
The application of hollow glass beads can cover many aspects of life. For example, the reason why crosswalk covered on various roads can be clearly visible even in low visibility environment is because hollow glass beads are sprayed on its surface.
Hollow glass bead not only have the ability to reflect light, but also can make the crosswalk more corrosion-resistant, making it widely used in road signs.
In addition, hollow glass beads are often found in traditional industries such as foam, lightweight GRP cores, and fiberglass spraying. It can not only reduce the quality of composite materials, but also make the composite materials with heat insulation, compression resistance, insulation and other stable properties.
Hollow glass beads are also excellent civil emulsion explosives sensitizer.
On the one hand, hollow glass bead can significantly enhance the explosive properties of emulsion explosives; on the other hand, the use of glass beads made of emulsion explosives are not easy to decompose in most acidic and alkaline environments, are not prone to corruption and deterioration failure, easy to store and longer shelf life.
There is no lack of hollow glass beads in the field of new materials and new energy.
For example, hollow glass beads can be used as filling materials for new energy vehicles. First of all, hollow glass bead can reduce the density of new energy vehicle internal and external accessories or ornaments, reduce the weight of the car to achieve lightweight production;
Secondly, hollow glass bead can reduce the frequency of adhesives used in new energy vehicles, optimize the physical and chemical properties of new energy vehicle internal and external accessories or ornaments, and improve production efficiency.
High-quality hollow glass bead can also be used in biomedicine, hydrogen energy storage and transportation, aerospace and other new material fields, for new materials to reduce weight, empowerment, application potential is huge.
