In the highly competitive sporting goods industry, manufacturers must react to market need and consumer demand with new, exciting products. When baseball bat manufacturer Hillerich & Bradsby Co, makers of the Louisville Slugger brand, needed to achieve a complex surface finish for a new aluminum baseball bat, they turned to the solution experts at BCP. After capturing the unique customer requirements, BCP built and tested the custom-built peening machine at its own manufacturing site before installing it in Hillerich & Bradsby's Ontario, CA plant. Now, the BCP® Bat Peening Machine helps Hillerich & Bradsby maintain its market position as an innovative and leading maker of top-performing sporting goods.

The two-wheel, Autoblast® machine features five individual cone-shaped rotating spindle fixtures. Two 15 in. diameter, variable speed, 15 hp, 12-bladed wheels supplied with Magna Valves® individually blast upper and lower parts of each baseball bat with S110 steel shot to achieve a consistent surface finish. The PLC touchscreen controller allows for the finishing of a variety of workpiece lengths and diameters including softball, T-ball and hardball bats. Designed to process one bat every seven seconds, the Bat Peening Machine can process 250 bats an hour.

"We have been very pleased with the performance of the BCP machine," said Tom Benson, Hillerich & Bradsby plant engineer. "We selected BCP for its proactive, solution-based approach to our surface finishing need. Until we contacted BCP, we were looking at a variety of options including used equipment and outsourcing, but their new equipment and services made the decision easy. Plus, the total solution was cost effective, and the machine paid for itself in only six months."

The machine includes a 2500 cfm dust collector, a 20 in. airwash separator, and a 3 cu ft abrasive adder. Abrasive additions are controlled by an autosensing level probe in the storage hopper, indicating when additional abrasive is required and eliminating guesswork for the machine's operator. The 20 in. airwash separator removes spent abrasive and aluminum fines and returns recycled abrasive to the storage hopper. Large contaminants enter a barrel for disposal, and smaller ones are captured by the USF-33 dust collector, ensuring easy waste removal.