By Barbara Donohue
Cutaway view of a part on a Bertsche high-pressure clean/deburr system shows internal features including angle passages, grooves and cross drilled holes. Features are deburred by spinning the part while high pressure water blasts the features.
The right parts cleaning system will fit into your process and cost-effectively give you the clean you need. Some systems can even do deburring.
Parts come off your lathes and machining centers covered with oil or cutting fluid and a lot of chips. The customer probably wants nice, clean parts. The best way to clean those parts depends on:
- Part material
- Part geometry
- Debris and soil to be removed
- Cleanliness required by the customer’s specs or for plating or other processes
- Other factors, such as the need to maintain lot integrity
An aluminum or plastic part might require a different cleaning approach than a steel part. A complex part with blind holes or small cavities will be more challenging to clean than a simpler part.
Parts are specified to be visually clean, maybe 50 to 70 percent of the time, said Jeff Brouchoud, president, Alliance Manufacturing, Inc., Fond du Lac, Wisc. Some customers want an “oil break” test—water beads up on an oily surface, but forms a uniform sheet on a clean part. For critical parts, a Millipore test is done, which collects debris from a part and analyzes it for particle size and quantity.
