Shot Blasters & Scarifiers

When you need to profile concrete faster or more aggressively than a grinder, our Shot Blasters and Scarifiers will do the job. Strip, clean and profile concrete in a time-saving way in a single pass.

A shot blaster is a piece of equipment that shoots large numbers of tiny round metal balls at the floor (known as “shot”). This metal “shot” is aggressive and highly effective at removing tough thin coatings like paint, thinset, epoxy etc. They don’t work well on soft coatings like rubber, glue or mastic. However,  a shot blaster can strip, clean and profile in a single step.

Shot blasters are most commonly used to quickly removing thin-mill coatings from a concrete floor, or removing a thin layer of concrete. A shot blaster also does the best job at cleaning floors that are wavy, rough or porous. Other similar equipment (grinders, scarifiers etc) uses flat heads or blades that either scrape flat over the top of the concrete, or cut rows into it.

A concrete scarifier is an aggressive walk-behind surface preparation machine that uses a drum to cut corn rows into a concrete floor. The size and depth of the rows is adjustable by using different drum attachments. An industrial vacuum or dust collector can be connected to eliminate airborne dust particles

Concrete scarifiers are most commonly used when aggressive removal is required. This would include epoxy coatings, thinset, or removal of ¼” of concrete at a time. Scarifiers are more aggressive and will cut through concrete faster than grinders or shot blasters. However, scarifiers also leave a rougher surface that will require grinding for certain flooring types (VCT, LVT, carpet etc).