What do the automotive and pharmaceutical industries have in common? At first, one might think that the two industries have little in common. After all, the automotive industry deals in car parts and the pharmaceutical industry is primarily concerned with the manufacture of medicines and surgical tools for use on living people.
However, when you think about it, you can easily find some common ground between these two industries. For example, both industries are concerned with customer safety, both manufacture goods, and both industries frequently process their manufactured items through various cleaning/sterilization processes, which frequently require some sort of custom container to hold the parts in place securely, such as a steel wire basket.
The Challenge
When parts for either the automotive or pharmaceutical industries are not completely clean, problems can arise. In pharmaceutical products, failure to sterilize a container and remove all debris can cause the contents of the container to become hazardous for consumption or use. In the automotive industry, loose debris left on a part can cause damage to a sensitive engineered part, ruining the part and potentially causing damage to other parts in the automobile.
Wire baskets help to ensure completely clean parts by holding these parts through your different cleaning processes, including:
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Ultrasonic Parts Washing.
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Vapor Degreasing.
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Sterilization.
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Aqueous Parts Washing.
Each of these processes is different from the rest, just as different types of parts have their own unique needs to ensure that they are completely clean.
How Custom Baskets Ensure Completely Clean Parts
While many machines come with some kind of stock basket to hold parts in the machine through a wash or sterilization process, these stock baskets are often a poor fit for the custom parts, containers, and tools processed by both the automotive and pharmaceutical industries. To hold custom parts securely takes a custom-manufactured basket.
With a basket designed for specific parts, those parts can be held securely in place so that they do not rattle around loosely during your cleaning process. In particular for aqueous parts washing, ultrasonic cleaning, and vapor degreasing processes, baskets need to be designed in such a way as to allow for runoff from the washing process to drain away completely. For these processes, a wire mesh basket with lots of open space between each wire is usually best, as the rounded edges of steel wire and the open area such baskets provide minimize the chances for liquid and solid debris alike to settle within the basket to be re-deposited onto the parts being washed.
Marlin Steel manufactures baskets to specifically protect sensitive parts than need to be sterile from:
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Debris trapped in grease collected during the manufacturing process.
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Small chips generated by the machining lathe, grinding, and milling processes.
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Fine silt particles left by brushes.
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Silicon carbide from rollers and tooling.
With a well-designed custom steel wire basket, these contaminants are allowed to drain away completely during your parts washing and finishing processes. This helps to prevent the problems that occur when contaminants are left on the parts you’re trying to get completely clean.
Even better, a custom basket can be made with specialized coatings such as PVC coatings to protect parts from getting scratched by contact with the basket itself, an important feature for ultra-delicate parts being put through an ultrasonic parts cleaning process.
For processes that involve moving parts, a custom wire basket can be designed to cradle the parts perfectly, minimizing the risk of parts falling from the basket as the basket moves through the machine. Lids can be added for processes that involve rotating the basket as well, further ensuring that parts are not lost in the wash cycle.
How can Marlin Steel build a better basket for your needs? Find out today!
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