On the railway construction from Clark International Airport (Pampanga) to Calamba (Laguna), a Japanese equipment rental company supplied five Bristle Blaster® units and belts to the fabrication contractor, who uses them to clean welds before painting. The tools came through SEPCO, MontiPower's distributor in the Philippines.
Welded steel for infrastructure has to be painted, and every weld has to be cleaned first: slag, spatter, heat tint and oxide all sit where the coating needs the best grip. In the Philippines the traditional answer is an angle grinder with a cup brush. It is cheap, but it tends to polish the steel rather than profile it.
The project
The railway line from Clark International Airport in Pampanga to Calamba in Laguna involves extensive steel construction and fabrication. A Japanese equipment rental company bought five Bristle Blaster® units, together with a stock of belts, from SEPCO Industrial Supply and Transformer Services and supplied them to the contractor building the line. Their purpose: clean the weld before painting.
Three other contractors each bought a Bristle Blaster® for small patch repairs and weld cleaning.
A coating contractor that uses its own tools
SEPCO is not only a distributor. It applies anti-corrosion coatings and linings in power generation, marine and industrial plants, and uses the Bristle Blaster® itself for patch repairs of coating and lining systems on sea-water cooling piping. In SEPCO's experience, the tool's best seller in the Philippines is the Bristle Blaster® Electric Double, because it produces a profile similar to grit blasting at a faster rate than a single-belt tool.
"If some of you are into coating and lining applications, make use of the Monti Bristle Blaster and Tercoo as a 2-in-1 system in surface preparation works."
— SEPCO, at the MontiPower APAC Regional Meeting, October 2026
Why not a grinder?
A grinder or cup brush removes loose material but tends to burnish the steel, which leaves a poor mechanical key for the coating. The Bristle Blaster® removes contamination and creates an anchor profile in one step. See weld cleaning and Bristle Blaster® vs conventional power tools.
Why it matters
A railway is built to last generations, and its coatings fail first at the welds. Profiling every weld properly before painting is prevention rather than cure: it avoids early rust bleed and costly repainting on a live line. It also keeps the work safer and cleaner on a busy construction site, with no blast media and no grit in the air for crews and neighbours (People, Planet). And it puts a blast-comparable result into the hands of every fabrication crew, not only blasting specialists (Power).
Cleaning welds before coating? Ask our team or SEPCO in the Philippines for a demonstration on your own steel.
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