The U.S. military and the commercial airline industry require a variety of quality controls and standards for removing old paint, adhesives and other coatings off composite panels—or an entire aircraft—by a process called plastic media blasting.

Removing metallic sharp edges, nicks and burrs is no mystery in production operations such as machine stamping and other post manufacturing processes. The unwanted material is removed by a process called deburring and is usually performed using some type of hand tool or other machine that is often time consuming and labor intensive.