Old Archives

One Clean Source reader asked a question about the need to run cleanliness testing. “Have you ever written an article that explains why/not ionic contamination testing is required if using no-clean fluxes?” In a global sense, the question is related to: How clean is clean enough? When do you need […]

In a recent LinkedIn post, one of our colleagues, Randy Leighty, comments that “experience is a great teacher, but it can be an obstacle to innovation and continuous improvement.”  We ask: Is experience inherently an obstacle to improvement? Let’s start with a round of applause for inertia! Critical cleaning involves […]

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, particularly of high-value product, most decisions are situational. […]

High-value product has to be clean to function reliably; but nearly all manufacturing processes inevitably generate soils. You should know about an important new guidance document. While it is designed for medical device manufacturing, it should be of value to anyone concerned with cleaning and contamination control. “Tell me the […]

Think critically; clean critically. To grow your manufacturing business, you must make well-informed, cost-effective decisions about critical product cleaning. Consider the source. Advertising influences our critical cleaning decisions – it’s unavoidable. In our March 2016 issue of Clean Source, we described the pervasive influence of native advertising. We showed you […]

During a recent cleaning and chemistry course, a student asked a thought-provoking question about solubility, miscibility, and cocktail hour.  I explained that some liquids, like oil and water, are immiscible. That is, they don’t form a “single phase;” the oil is on top of the water. The observant student wondered […]

To me, “native advertising” evokes the cast of “Madmen” in vintage business suits and starched white shirts sitting cross-legged, somberly thumping on bongo drums with one hand and hoisting diet sodas with the other. Native advertising is not exotic; it is an example of how the line between fact and […]