Innovative cleaning process ensures product quality and economic efficiency

Com­po­nent clean­ing is a qual­i­ty-rel­e­vant pro­duc­tion step in all indus­tri­al sec­tors today. In order to meet giv­en par­tic­u­late and filmic clean­li­ness spec­i­fi­ca­tions in a repro­ducible man­ner, a high lev­el of effort is often required. At the same time, clean­ing should be car­ried out at the low­est pos­si­ble cost and in a sus­tain­able man­ner. These con­tra­dic­to­ry require­ments make clean­ing process­es and sys­tems designed to meet spe­cif­ic needs indispensable.

From mechan­i­cal and plant engi­neer­ing to elec­tri­cal and pow­er engi­neer­ing to fas­ten­ers, the so-called gen­er­al indus­try includes a wide range of sec­tors. Com­po­nents are man­u­fac­tured and processed in these indus­tri­al sec­tors using very dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies from a wide range of mate­ri­als such as met­als, plas­tics, ceram­ics and com­pos­ites. These include, for exam­ple, cast and machined work­pieces, stamped, bent, pressed and deep-drawn parts, hydraulic parts and, increas­ing­ly, addi­tive­ly man­u­fac­tured com­po­nents. As diverse as the work­pieces are, they have one thing in com­mon: In order to ensure the qual­i­ty of sub­se­quent process­es such as mechan­i­cal machin­ing, heat treat­ment, coat­ing, bond­ing, and assem­bly, as well as per­ma­nent­ly flaw­less func­tion, they must be clean as required. In many areas, increas­ing­ly strin­gent require­ments have to be met in terms of par­tic­u­late and film clean­li­ness. In addi­tion, there are often chal­lenges such as high through­puts and weights, a Page 2 of 6 Eco­clean GmbH www.ecoclean-group.net wide­ly vary­ing range of com­po­nents, short deliv­ery times and, in some cas­es, low margins.

Adapting cleaning processes to the task at hand

This results in dif­fer­ent require­ments for com­po­nent clean­ing. As a full-range sup­pli­er of future-ori­ent­ed, flex­i­ble and ener­gy-effi­cient solu­tions for indus­tri­al com­po­nent clean­ing, Eco­clean cov­ers the entire spec­trum of wet-chem­i­cal process­es. This enables clean­ing process­es and equip­ment for batch or indi­vid­ual part clean­ing to be opti­mal­ly adapt­ed to the task in hand. The fol­low­ing fac­tors must be tak­en into account: Mate­r­i­al, size, geom­e­try and weight of the com­po­nent, type and amount of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, down­stream process and result­ing clean­li­ness spec­i­fi­ca­tions, as well as through­put require­ments. Based on this infor­ma­tion, it can be deter­mined whether the adher­ent con­t­a­m­i­nants can be most effec­tive­ly removed with a water-based clean­er, an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sol­vent or a mod­i­fied alco­hol that has lipophilic and hydrophilic prop­er­ties. In addi­tion, this infor­ma­tion allows the most suit­able process tech­nol­o­gy and dry­ing tech­nol­o­gy to be defined.

Suitable process technology minimizes cleaning costs

To min­i­mize the cost per cleaned com­po­nent, it is nec­es­sary that the giv­en clean­li­ness spec­i­fi­ca­tion is not only achieved sta­bly, but also quick­ly. For this pur­pose, the sys­tems are equipped with var­i­ous process tech­nolo­gies designed specif­i­cal­ly for the appli­ca­tion, for exam­ple for spray, high-pres­sure, immer­sion, ultra­son­ic and plas­ma clean­ing, steam degreas­ing, injec­tion flood wash­ing, debur­ring, pulsed pres­sure clean­ing (PPC) and, if required, passivation/preservation.

By com­bin­ing these clean­ing process­es, both the clean­ing result and the clean­ing time can be specif­i­cal­ly influ­enced to suit the com­po­nent. For exam­ple, the PPC process in com­bi­na­tion with aque­ous or sol­vent immer­sion clean­ing enables con­t­a­m­i­nants to be removed reli­ably and quick­ly from small cav­i­ties. For com­plex Page 3 of 6 Eco­clean GmbH www.ecoclean-group.net com­po­nents and bulk mate­ri­als, spray process­es and injec­tion flood wash­ing with adjustable pres­sures between ten and 16 bar also ensure sig­nif­i­cant­ly improved results and short­ened process times for sol­vent clean­ing processes.