Contamination control made easier ... and better

Paul Boughton

While cleaning hose and tube assemblies has traditionally been done using a fluid flushing method, a relatively new 'dry' technique is gaining popularity. Eric Van Alphen reports.

Controlling contamination is par for the course in any industry, and for any company, that must prevent costly breakdown of machinery - both in terms of money lost during downtime, and expensive repairs.

But when contamination does occur, one of the first places a culprit can be found is within a machine's hydraulic system - its hoses and tubes. Crucial fluids that pass through hose and tube assemblies and are the lifeblood of often enormous machines, can cause them to choke, sputter and spew on something as simple as a speck of dust or a microscopic particle of plastic, unintentionally sheared off when a newly-cleaned hose was capped for shipping.

Ultra Clean Technologies, a leader in the hydraulic hose and tube cleaning industry, offers a system that employs air pressure to shoot a foam projectile through a hose or tube assembly using a gun-like pneumatic launcher. The projectile picks up any dirt, dust, oil and other unwanted particles before exiting the hose. The system makes hose cleaning quick, clean, easy and affordable. More importantly, Ultra Clean's system is extremely effective, enabling cleanliness levels of ISO 13/10 to be achieved.

The Hand-Held Launcher is available in a variety of kits, each featuring different size launcher nozzles to accommodate different sizes and types of projectiles, including abrasive and grinding types for heavy duty jobs. There is a kit available to fit almost every need, no matter the size of the hoses and tubes to be cleaned. The Bench Mount Launcher is ideal for production-type facilities, allowing the operator to use a foot switch launcher, and freeing his hands to keep production moving quickly. For even higher volume production, there's the AutoLoader, which uses a high-tech system to automatically count, store, fire and verify projectiles of different sizes. A Projectile Verification System (PVS) ensures the projectile has exited the hose.

Recently, Ultra Clean Technologies introduced two new products that expand their line and mission of making contamination control easier, cleaner and more effective.

The Clean Seal System utilises heat-shrink technology to seal the ends of cleaned hoses and tube assemblies, much like the shrink-wrapped seals around corks on wine bottles. This technology transfer to the hose and tube cleaning industry eliminates the pervasive contamination and inventory problems associated with today's standard method of capping. In general, because hose and tube sizes vary greatly, often hundreds of different size and caps and plugs are kept on hand. Besides the mixed-up mess, operators who are usually in a hurry, pick and force the wrong size cap or plug onto an assembly, inadvertently shearing off small particles of plastic into the hose. Caps can easily pop-off during shipping.

With just 11 Clean Seal System capsule sizes to fit all size hoses, inventory and error is greatly reduced and the entire process is much easier. The operator simply places a capsule over the end of the hose or tube and positions it for 1-2 seconds inside the heating element. Ultra Clean offers a hand-held heat shrink unit (with optional stands and diffusers), or a larger table-top unit that can seal several hoses at once. Removal of the capsule is easy, just 'Grip, Rip, & Slip' the black tab off in a single motion.

The second new product in Ultra Clean's line-up is the Clean Seal Flange, developed to keep oil in and dirt out of hydraulic hoses when components such as pumps, cylinders or valves have to be removed, or components need to be switched out, such as breakers, grapples or shears. Sadly, until now, it was common to find in field situations a disconnected assembly plugged-up with an old, dirty rag. Clean Seal Flange changes all that. With eight colour-coded sizes, the flange easily attaches to any assembly sized -8 through -32. The flange is made of durable anodised aluminium and requires no tools for an easy fit!

Contamination control is evolving and becoming better, with technologies such as those from Ultra Clean Technologies. Make sure you keep up with the changes.

Enter √  at www.engineerlive.com/epe

Eric van Alphen is with Ultra Clean Technologies Corp, Bridgeton, NJ, USA. www.ultracleantech.com

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