Shot Peening / Media Blasting

What this process does

Shot peening / bead blasting propels small media (glass beads, plastic pellets, stainless shot) at the part surface at high velocity. Effects:

• Smoothing (bead blast): reduces surface roughness of parts
• Strengthening (shot peen): induces compressive stress, improves fatigue life on metal parts
• Cleaning (media blast): removes support, powder remnants or oxidation

Key pricing characteristic: cost is driven almost entirely by surface area - the machine blasts the entire surface of the part. Time per part scales with area. This can be a manual or autoamted process which might impact the cost as well.

Level 2 algorithm - area-based

const { area } = specification

const ratePerMm2 = variable('Rate per mm²', 0.0018)  // adjust per machine throughput
const MIN_CHARGE = variable('Minimum charge', 5.00)

const areaCost  = round(area * ratePerMm2, 2)
const unitPrice = variable('unitPrice', Math.max(MIN_CHARGE, areaCost))
done(unitPrice)

Notes

• Shot peening of metal parts (Ti, Inconel) uses the same structure but a higher rate and review flag for complex geometry that can't be fully reached by the shot stream.
• Parts with deep internal channels may need masking or multiple setups - reviewRequired for volume / convexHullVolume < 0.5.