How do I validate my shop’s Ultrasonic cleaner?
I work in a machine shop that makes prototype medical instruments and implants. Although we do not do final cleaning of any product,we do run them through an L &R ultrasonic cleaner (model S310H) before shipping to remove any manufacturing agents such as cooling fluid. One of our customers is asking us to validate this process;although they’ve supplied us with THEIR validation for a cleaning line (mass production),it doesn’t fit our capacity due to the small quantities of parts we manufacture. How can we go about doing this to fit our operation’s capacity (as well as our bottom line)? Any help and ideas on how (or even where to start looking) would be much appreciated.
While it’s not exactly ‘validation’,it is a GOOD idea to see if the transducers in your ultrasonic cleaners are doing anything. We recently checked those in our machine shop,and found that 3 out of 7 had burned out transducers. They still made the high-pitched whiny sound,but emitted no ultrasonics and didn’t clean very well.
There’s a couple of ways you can do a quick check. A drop of dye in a beaker of water should dissolve far quicker under ultrasonics,and soda water loses its dissolved gas far sooner under ultrasonics. Looking for bubbling when a dirty part is inserted is also good,as the cavitation from the ultrasonics is what gives you the enhanced cleaning.
Finally,check with L&R. Their contact information is at http://www.lrultrasonics.com/contact.html,and I’m sure they’d be happy to answer a simple question.
Good luck!
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