Cleaning – Soluble Contaminants – “Solvents”

In the blog entitled The Lowdown on Dirt, the three basic classes of contaminants were described.  They are – soluble, particulate and a mixture of soluble and particulate.  There are, of course many hybrids and permutations but for purposes of discussing the ultrasonic effect on cleaning we’ll limit to these three for now.  Later on we can …

Is It Clean – Particles – Particle Generating Substrates

Some substrate materials are inherent particle generators and may never be cleaned to the point of there being no particles present.  With these materials, particles are a way of life and can not be avoided.  This, of course, makes cleanliness testing using particle analysis a difficult if not impossible task.  The difficulty is exacerbated by …

Is It Clean? – Particles – Exceptional Particles – Magnetism

Before we leave the subject of particles and particle counting, there are some things we need to touch on regarding “exceptional” particles.  In an earlier blog,  Particles That Don’t Count?, we discussed briefly some particles that may or may not count when it comes to analyzing the cleanliness of a part.  These and several other kinds of …

The BIG Four

There are four basic variables that, combined, establish the success or failure of any industrial cleaning process.  The variables are Time, Temperature, Chemistry and Agitation.  Although there may be additional variables – things like fixture design and variations in the process prior to cleaning – which can have major impact and, in fact, make or …

The Ultrasonic Marching Band

When I first started working with ultrasonic cleaning back in the early 1960’s “ultrasonic” meant 20kHz. That’s all there was! Some very early sonic cleaning equipment used by one of the major automotive manufacturers in the prior decade had operated at 10kHz using a motor/generator to develop the driving signal for some very crude transducers …

Good Tools = Good Results?

Somewhere along the way, maybe half a lifetime ago, I got involved in photography on a semi-professional basis. I photographed a bunch of weddings and also spent a lot of time cruising around back roads taking pictures of birds, colored leaves, snow banks, flowers and whatever else I thought was interesting that got in the …