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Parts washing

Unahorn

Aluminum
Joined
Sep 20, 2012
Location
sacramento
Any suggestions for cleaning and drying small parts from Swiss style machines? Tedious right now with too much labor.
 
Not swiss specific, but I've heard of guys using household or commercial dishwashers for the purpose. Household would probably work better as commercial dishwashers store the rinse water in the base (which will go nasty) and often don't have a drying cycle.

EDIT: thinking about this, might not actually be a great idea as the wastewater will probably be full of coolant... Probably not a great approach environmentally.
 
I use a smaller tumbler from the chiness embasy or the 2 dillion ones I have. the key to clean and dry is the media soap you use. regualr dishwater soap and other home soaps leave a residue that screws up plating if the platers dont clean parts properly.

for metals I use small ceramic triangles for alum and brassI use plastic media thats tool small for out mr deburr tumbler.
what ever you do make sure you run water in there with the soap and keep it fresh.
with media/tumbling soap your parts will be dry in mins after blowing them off with air and spot free.
we also use an ultraconic cleaner with alcohol if they have threads after tumbling
 
Really depends on what kind of dirty we are talking about.

I think the biggest thing is what is your coolant? Is it straight
cutting oil, or is it soluble coolant?

I don't remember when it was but there was somebody here that ran un-diluted
soluble oil (or coolant variation), but didn't add the water in their swiss
machine. Made sense to me, the oil just rinsed off in a second op on the mill,
or would simply rinse off in a bucket of water. Its why I use non-diluted
coolant to tap outside the machine with, it rinses right off. Just throw the oily
parts into the machine next to the vise and run a few parts, and you get clean parts.
Or if you are rinsing in a bucket, then just toss the bucket in a mill or the band saw.

After that, Dawn, the non-smelly kind works really really well, and doesn't screw up
the surface. I've found that if you use 409 on aluminum before an alodine it looks like
garbage, Dawn, its perfect.

Rinsing and drying. Story time... years ago we had a first article for a big contract, and
it called out a passivate to a spec to I hadn't seen before. It required a water rinse, and
then a X time rinse in water between 150 and 170 degrees, and I didn't understand why... Until
I did it (First article, it was ALL by the book). Pull the parts out at 160 degrees or so,
and they dry on their own, almost instantly. It was pretty sweet.

If you are running a straight oily cutting oil. I don't know what to tell you.
 
We have salad spinners at each Swiss to spin off as much oil as possible before going into trays. Most of the parts ultimately get cleaned in an ultrasonic, but they contaminate fairly quick.

Have been looking into distilling the used mix to separate the oil and ultrasonic fluids. Haven't tested it yet though.
 
You should have provided a lot more information. As mentioned before, what are you using for coolant? Do your parts have a lot of deep small bores that are hard to get clean of chips and coolant. What type of materials do you run? What approximate sizes and volumes are we talking?
 
Not swiss specific, but I've heard of guys using household or commercial dishwashers for the purpose. Household would probably work better as commercial dishwashers store the rinse water in the base (which will go nasty) and often don't have a drying cycle.

EDIT: thinking about this, might not actually be a great idea as the wastewater will probably be full of coolant... Probably not a great approach environmentally.

I actually gave that a thought when I was making a lot of automotive pulleys in the Dualkit days. I never tried it, and got blasted on here by a few people for giving it a thought. I think you would have to have a pretty specific type of parts for it to work. Too small and I think they would get badly damaged.
 
I actually gave that a thought when I was making a lot of automotive pulleys in the Dualkit days. I never tried it, and got blasted on here by a few people for giving it a thought. I think you would have to have a pretty specific type of parts for it to work. Too small and I think they would get badly damaged.

I've been doing it for decades

Aluminum parts, no added heat, right out of the tumbler

Got the idea in 1983 when they plumbed a brand new potscrubber II in the place I worked and used it to clean PC boards
 
I thought we were supposed to stay economical.... But if we're going to Crest, then one of these should work well for larger batches:

Automated Parts Washing Systems – RAMCO Parts Washers

I must have missed that part......:D

Crest, in my opinion. Is economical. Since it seems to be the only one that lasts more than 2 years.

Does the Master stages 2030 work better than Zep Purple? Our parts are all 316 stainless.

I honestly couldn't tell you. I use it cause it leaves a corrosion inhibiting film which means fuck all for 316. My dad also seems to have a habit of washing thousands of pieces of brass in it which seems to work well for him, but not me when I have to drain the tank from all the gunpowder and carbon residue LOL
 


Really hate any company who can not even say a msrp price. Only thing we can get out of them is "North of 100k" Seriously why are nearly all machine dealers and machine accessories so stubborn about putting a price on a product. Just tell us the price or have it listed so I can make a determination if this is something we want to spend for our company.

You should have provided a lot more information. As mentioned before, what are you using for coolant? Do your parts have a lot of deep small bores that are hard to get clean of chips and coolant. What type of materials do you run? What approximate sizes and volumes are we talking?

Sorry about being lazy on the description, was just in a hurry like normal and looking for ideas and solutions. Mostly focused on our screw machines. Mostly 300 series steels about 75% of the work, and about 25% aluminum parts, cutting in per oil.
 
We are currently using smaller ultrasonic cleaners and hand blowing off the parts. Grabbing a larger ultrasonic machine would make sense and is affordable. It is the labor of blowing off each individual part is becoming a chore.
 
Really hate any company who can not even say a msrp price. Only thing we can get out of them is "North of 100k" Seriously why are nearly all machine dealers and machine accessories so stubborn about putting a price on a product. Just tell us the price or have it listed so I can make a determination if this is something we want to spend for our company.



Sorry about being lazy on the description, was just in a hurry like normal and looking for ideas and solutions. Mostly focused on our screw machines. Mostly 300 series steels about 75% of the work, and about 25% aluminum parts, cutting in per oil.

How many parts per day? Budget?
 
We are currently using smaller ultrasonic cleaners and hand blowing off the parts. Grabbing a larger ultrasonic machine would make sense and is affordable. It is the labor of blowing off each individual part is becoming a chore.

Send the parts out for cleaning to a plating house... way better than doing internally.
 








 
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