Barbara Kanegsberg

Manufacturers are in a fascinating, frightening era. It is also an era with excellent opportunities for growth. There are problems galore. Critical cleaning processes are changing, sometimes in unexpected, uncontrolled ways. Reliable, effective cleaning agents that have been used successfully are being restricted or eliminated. Replacement cleaning agents typically require […]

Barb Kanegsberg with Kevin Pawlowski* As indicated in a recent LinkedIn post (Ref 1), perchloroethylene “creeps” – it has favorable wetting properties that allow access to residue in tight spaces. Many classic chlorinated and brominated solvents have similar “creeping” or wetting properties; and they have aggressive solvency properties – they […]

Chemophobia pervades our society. Should you fear 4-hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde? Not in tiny amounts, not if you enjoy cookies. A shorter name is vanillin, the primary chemical in vanilla extract. We fear chemicals because they have complicated names and often have fancy structures. Fear of an individual chemical leads to demonization of […]

[This article appeared in Clean Source, October 2016] Never use a consumer/automotive cleaning agent for precision cleaning high-value product. True or false Quick! True or false. This is a timed test, and you will be graded. I hate true/false tests; there’s no room for nuance. In critical and precision cleaning, […]

To The Cleaning Lady, nostalgia includes hand-grating potatoes for Chanukkah latkes; and bandaging the inevitable minor knuckle scrapes. Nostalgia includes one lonely Menorah with orange candles set high on a mantlepiece (the elders were afraid that the Cleaning Lady would set fire to the house). Nostalgia for The Rocket Scientist […]

It’s an emergency! Regulators decide that the cleaning agent is unsafe for workers, neighborhoods, and/or the environment. Manufacturers are faced with the capital costs, testing, and performance verification associated with finding a substitute chemical and changing an established effective cleaning process. Within a few years, there’s another emergency. Regulators decide […]

We all know that “oil and water don’t mix,” that like dissolves like. We’ve heard statements that solvents (organic solvents) work for non-polar soils while water works for salts. Critical product cleaning, like life, is complex; and the range of soils even for a given manufacturing situation are more varied. […]

If you are involved in manufacturing, if you are part of a supply chain, rugged critical cleaning processes will improve your productivity and profitability. You may be an OEM, a job shop, even a repair/rework facility. You may be the ultimate customer and have little or no direct contact with […]