Clean Source Newsletter Archive

We start with a shameless plug for the Product Quality Cleaning Workshop21 (PQCW21). The May workshop is virtual, convenient, cost-effective, and informative. PQCW21 provides the skills to become the expert that saves your company time, money and aggravation. PQCW21 gives you the weapons to defend critical cleaning process choices to […]

Some children hang out together constantly – they are inseparable. Many solvent blends for critical cleaning applications are marketed as “azeotropes” or “azeotrope-like”. In some ways azeotropes behave like childhood best friends – under certain conditions, the molecules seem inseparable. As a product manufacturer, it makes great business sense to […]

‘Tis the season to be brave – to get educated, to speak up, to consider your critical cleaning options, to strategize. The U.S. EPA, under what is sometimes referred to as TSCA reform, is looking not only at the environmental impact of certain chemicals but also at worker exposure. As […]

Cleaning requires dislodging a soil and carrying it away from a surface. For this to happen, the cleaning or rinse fluid must energetically access the surface. However, a boundary layer of liquid with reduced flow velocities can impede cleaning. A similar effect occurs in flowing waterways, like a river or […]

Cleaning processes tend to build up; one layer of cleaning is added to another. The overall cleaning process becomes something that resembles sedimentary rock (or, to the surface of the desk of the Rocket Scientist). Recently, a manufacturing engineer involved in optics fabrication, called to brainstorm and, frankly, to vent. […]

“To err is human, to forgive divine,” Alexander Pope (1) To err is not an option in critical product cleaning. The stark reality for manufacturers is that error leads to low yields, unsatisfied customers, lost business. Error, often resulting from ineffective or avoided critical product cleaning, can jeopardize patients, passengers, […]

For new perspectives on effective cleaning, simply go to a trade show. What trade shows? Explore cleaning options by continuing our virtual tour of the 2019 parts2clean trade fair in Stuttgart. In the first installment of “Cleaning Perspective “(1), we discussed cyclic nucleation, laser and CO2 processes. We continue with […]

Read this if you use free-range, cage-free cleaning agents to clean products during manufacturing. Read this if you clean with halogenated solvents. Even if you don’t use halogenated solvents, there is a good chance that the performance of your current cleaning processes depends on manufacturers in your supply chain who […]

Successful manufacturers make it a point to look at cleaning options from new perspectives. They picture how those options can improve production – whether or not they plan an immediate change in critical product cleaning. There are lots of ways to gain new perspectives, including actual travel to programs, webinars, […]

If battling COVID-19 involves new strategies, doing so in a manufacturing environment demands coordinated brilliance. Manufacturers are adding emergency protocols to protect employees, including the way they clean work surfaces. For many manufacturers involved in critical product cleaning, precision cleaning, and surface preparation, the concern is with removing soils that […]

Imagine that you manufacture medical devices. As a final step, the devices are placed in an autoclave; and sterilized using an approved, validated method. Next, you open the autoclave. What do you see? A mouse on top of the devices! YUK! The mouse may have been sterilized. The devices may […]

Cleaning agents have truly amusing trade names! However, the name is not the molecule; and mixtures with similar trade names may behave very differently. I’ll give you some tips to understand the chemicals or mixtures behind the trade name. Choose the right cleaning agent, and you make critical product cleaning […]