RAMCO Washing System for Automotive and Commercial Fittings
The customer manufactures a multitude of small brass, steel, and stainless steel fittings used in the manufacture of air conditioning/heating units for automotive and commercial applications. The parts are machined, threaded, and bored to exacting tolerances. For years the company has been able to grow despite the fact that the presence of chips, fines, and even oils on the parts, even after manual solvent cleaning, could not be significantly reduced. Testing was completed at the test lab of the local distributor using the RAMCO Dynamic Flow Combination approach, and a neutral cleaner to keep the brass finish as natural as possible. The results were excellent. Chips and fines were removed easily, while the oils were thoroughly removed.
A COMPLETE system approach was selected by the customer with assistance from the local distributor Automated Cleaning Technologies. A four stage RAMCO MK-36 line (see below) was built primarily for the soft metal parts. In anticipation of adding the steel and stainless steel parts to the new cleaning process, but in separate washing and rinsing stages to minimize contamination of the brass with ferrous fines, the dryer was set up to accept additional stages from the right.
To remove the oils in the most efficient manner, and to the highest degree, a SUPARATOR thin film oil removal unit (not shown) was integrated to the highly successful RAMCO Surface Sweep System. This oil removal “duo” has been tested to show a 99.8% removal of oils and an extension of bath life and detergent potency by many times over.
Lastly, to avoid any environmental risk by discharging wash or rinse solution to drain, an evaporation system (not shown) was included with auto-fill, a large holding tank, and a pair of industrial duty air diaphragm pumps for automatic processing of the spent rinse and wash solutions.
The customer can now process two large baskets of fittings in each stage, with cycle times under 10-minutes for each stage. This production capacity far exceeds the original manual dipping of parts, and delivers high performance with consistent results.
The photo below shows the rear of the system. The Nema 12 control panels include lockout-tagout disconnect switches. Note that nothing is placed underneath processing tanks or tucked behind “access” panels. All valves, pumps, filters, cylinders and heaters are accessible, clearly visible for inspection and easily serviced.
