Can Sandblasting Abrasive Remove Bed Liner?

Removing bed liner from a truck can be a difficult task. It can be done with sandblasting, but more advanced superoxalloy blast abrasives are better options.

With time, bed liner can fade, chip, bubble, rip, or crack, making it cosmetically unattractive and removing the protection from the bed itself. When that happens, it’s time to remove and replace the old liner.

How Can Bed Liner be Removed? 

There aren’t many effective options to remove a difficult spray-in bed liner, the few options that do exist are often time-consuming and require a lot of patience or skill. For example, using a heat gun and chisel often requires a chemical bath beforehand which may require more than one application. Other methods, such as using a grinder, could be damaging to the underlying surface itself. 

Abrasive blasting is a method in which an air compressor is used to propel abrasive particles through a nozzle and onto a project surface, removing a layer of coating — in this case, bed liner. This can be done with a variety of different abrasive media, including sand, glass beads, garnet, crushed walnut shells, and aluminum oxide.

However, these abrasive media often come with some downsides. For example, softer particles like plastic and glass may take a long time to remove the bed line. Harder mineral blast media, such as sand or garnet, can contain high amounts of free-silica. Silica can cause lung inflammation or silicosis when breathed in, which can be fatal. 

Newer types of blast abrasive, which are created in special factories rather than mined from the ground offer significant improvements over older, legacy blast abrasives. Superoxalloy abrasives outperform other blast media, meaning you need less time and material to do a job. Plus, they can be significantly less hazardous to work with and are often more re-usable. 

What’s the Best Blast media to Remove Bed Liner? 

10X Engineered Materials has created a line of superoxalloy abrasives that will get the job done efficiently, while avoiding the issues that may be present with other media types. 

EpiX, DynamiX, and KinetiX superoxally abrasives from 10X are made up of polymorphous particles that make the blasting process more efficient at the individual-particle level. In addition to efficiency, these particles can also be reused multiple times, and require substantially less.

Currently, KinetiX, DynamiX, and EpiX are available from abrasive distributors around the US. If you don’t see a distributor near you, contact 10X and we will work with you to get you what you need. EpiX abrasive, which is best for precision applications such as powder coating and medical applications, is also available to purchase directly from the 10X Engineered Materials website.