Merrill Steel, a structural steel fabricator based in Wisconsin, has completed a year-long upgrade of its 50+ year old roller conveyor shot-blast machine—with Wheelabrator’s EZX blast wheels. The switch resulted in a 100% increase in throughput and significant reductions in maintenance and operating costs. By doubling capacity on existing equipment Merrill was able to avoid the investment in a third machine.

Merrill Steel runs two Wheelabrator shot-blast machines that run 10- and 11-hour shifts, five days a week. An 8-wheel machine had been upgraded a while ago, but the 14-wheel machine, dating to the 1970s, was becoming a bottleneck in Merrill’s production line. The team quickly looked for new wheel technology to increase shot-blast capacity without compromising quality.

In a rigorous six-month, side-by-side trial during 2024, Merrill compared a competitor’s wheel with Wheelabrator’s EZX wheel on identical blast machine set-ups. The results were clear: the EZX wheel outperformed the competition across every metric—from blast efficiency to more uptime and longer stretches for maintenance calls. Merrill later switched all 14 wheels on the machine to EZX.

While the main goal of the upgrade was to unlock extra production headroom, Merrill’s trial showed that EZX wheels could also deliver longer maintenance intervals and shorter maintenance breaks. The upgrade in numbers:

• Throughput up 100%
• Maintenance interval extended to 1200+ blast hours, more than 50% longer than on the other wheel tested
• Maintenance time down 50%