The agicides

Products
The "vegetal abrasives", called also "Agicides" are products of exclusively natural origin and exist in 3 main types:
The fruits stones and shells
- apricots stones
- peaches stones
- olives stones
- walnuts shells
- hazelnuts shells
The maize resistant axis
The sawdust
- hard and soft woods essences

Features
They are made through the crushing and the grinding of the raw material. The dust is removed; they are graded and supplied in determined granulometries.
- apparent density: 0,7 to 0,8
- granulometry: 0,1 to 4 mm
- hardness: 4 to 5 Mohs.
They are soft, clean and chemically inert abrasives and they are able to absorb up to 7 times their weight in water. Their resistance to fragmentation is relatively low and allows thus an outstanding recycling of the product.

Uses
The reduced density of these abrasives turn their use to the light cleaning and the trimming of plastic parts and to the elimination of small dirt, calamines, rough patches, paints, glues or varnishes. Its light aggressiveness makes it possible to realize operations of polishing or satin-finishing on plastic materials, cleaning of moulds, cylinder heads and crankcases made of light alloy.
They are used in pressure automatic or manual machines, but can also in some cases be projected in blast wheel machines.

The starches

Products
The wheat or maize starches are natural polymer, non-toxic and biodegradable.
These products result from polymerization and reticulation in an alkaline environment of a gel made from flour. This flour is subjected to a complex industrial process: extrusion (jellification of the protein complex), drying, crushing and sifting. This process makes it possible to obtain various granulometries

Features
The finished product is under the form of abrasive particles with an opaque white colour.
- voluminal mass: 1,45
- granulometry: 0,6 to 1,8 mm (meeting the US standards)
- hardness: 2 to 3 Mohs.

Uses
These abrasives are made especially for treating surfaces while reducing the risks to damage the substratum. They are totally biodegradable and do not leave any residue that could be noxious or a nuisance. They are used to remove paints on light alloys surfaces with protective films such as Alodine which will be protected. They are able to strip on a very selective way. They are thus preferred to the plastic abrasives for the treatment of composites such as graphite, fibreglass or Kevlar.
They are use in the Aeronautics and the shipbuilding to clean and strip the planes and hulls structures or to remove the paints and varnishes on wood.