Suggestions on Shutting Down Plating Lines for the Short-Term

With more factories redirecting their production capacity to help fight the coronavirus pandemic, you may find yourself needing to idle one or more of your plating lines for a few days or weeks. While shutting down a plating line is rarely desirable, today's business environment may demand it. On behalf of the Asterion Team, here are some suggestions on shutting down your lines for the short-term. Each suggestion should be further customized to best suit you plating operation and business requirements. Keep heated plating baths at minimum temperatures Top off cleaner tanks and shut … [Read more...]

Cleaning Cycle Optimization

Should we be content with letting cleaning baths get contaminated with oils and soils? We can just dump and make up a fresh bath, right? You could go that route, but beware; without proper cleaning blisters, poor adhesion, pitting, peeling, and flaking may start to rear their ugly heads before a fresh bath can be made. There is a better answer. What would happen if agitation and filtration systems were added to a cleaner? The filters remove bulk soils and particulates as they are being introduced to the bath. An agitation system mechanically sweeps particulate matter away from the … [Read more...]

Effective Manufacturing Parts Cleaning

Parts washing and coating pretreatment is an integral part of many manufacturing operations across the U.S. today.  Typically if the part is going to be welded, coated, assembled, or shipped "as is," the greases, lubricants, coolants, and oils from the previous step must be removed to ensure effective future process success.  Sometimes the pretreatment step is an afterthought, or an effective full assessment has never been performed to determine what is the best pretreatment chemistry for your process.  How do you choose the best pretreatment chemistry? Many times the existing cleaning … [Read more...]