When a customer asks us how they can check the performance of their ultrasonic tank, the easiest way to do it is through a foil test.
It is really easy to do and all you need is a piece of aluminium kitchen foil and your ultrasonic tank!
Firstly you want to fill your tank with clean mains water with no chemical in. A lot of ultrasonic chemicals will react with aluminium, especially thin foil.
Next you want to take a small square of aluminium foil, 10㎠ should do it.
Then, using gloves, you need to hold the foil under the solution for 30 seconds. While doing this, try to keep the foil straight and avoid it curling in on itself as this will not give the required results.
Next you want to hold the foil up to a light and see the results.
Good result
If the ultrasonic bath is working effectively then what you should see is an even covering of pinprick holes throughout the foil. The holes should be relatively uniform in size and be evenly distributed.
Bad result
If the ultrasonics are not working correctly you may see little or no holes on the foil. This would indicate that some or all of the transducers are no longer working.
Patchy holes
Another result you may see is large holes on some parts of the foil and little to no holes on other parts. This is caused by there being an ineffective or missing sweep frequency. This results in “Hotspots” of ultrasonic activity which can seriously damage your parts if not fixed.
Repeat
For the best results, repeat this test in different parts of the tank to make sure there is consistency throughout. The larger the tank, the more tests should be carried out.
For a free trial clean, a no-obligation discussion, or even a visit when the current situation permits, just call us on 01924 495 975 or e-mail Toby on toby@sonicsolutionsltd.com
It’s Andrew here, I wanted to take the opportunity to personally let you know what Sonic Solutions are doing in response to the current Covid-19 crisis that’s affecting us all. I want to outline the specific measures we’re taking to stay safe whilst continuing to support our customers through these challenging times. Below is a list of the specific safety, operational, financial and communication measures that we’re putting in place to ensure that we can support the country’s efforts during this pandemic responsibly and effectively.
Safety Measures
Clean Down Procedures – we have thorough cleaning procedures in place to ensure that hands are washed and any surfaces or objects with which contact is made are cleaned before and after use.
Social Distancing & Limited Contact – we are observing the recommended social distancing ensuring that staff remain a minimum of 2m apart from one another whilst on site.
Skeleton Staff – we are using as few staff as possible to continue normal operations, this ensures minimal contact. They are also on alternating shifts.
Personal Protective Gear – we’re using disposable nitrile gloves to handle all goods.
Operational Measures
Normal Working Hours – we continue to operate normal hours which are Monday to Thursday 8am to 5pm | Friday 8am to 1pm.
Emergency Work Accepted – if you require critical emergency ultrasonic cleaning to ensure the continuation of your business, we will accept and prioritise this work accordingly.
Prioritisation for Key Industries – we will prioritise work for customers that are from key industries that include Healthcare, Pharmaceuticals, Power Generation, Energy, Oil & Gas, Food Production etc
Smaller Jobs – are still being accepted.
Restricted Availability for High Volume jobs – as our focus is on facilitating as many customers as possible we are restricting or potentially declining high volume work. Exceptions may be made for critical key industry customers.
Lead Times – naturally these may change and if they do we will communicate this with you at the point of ordering.
Stock – we have ample stocks of cleaning chemicals.
Financial Measures
Flexible & Extended Payment Terms – for those that truly need this (and we are relying on your honesty) we can extend payment terms for up to 6 months if the continuation of our service to you is critical to your business. As a small business ourselves, we are reliant on paying customers now and indeed in the future once this all passes so we will do what we can to support you.
If you are in a position to continue to pay as normal that will ensure that we can continue to operate effectively and support the key industries that rely on our work to keep services and production running.
Communication Measures
Transparency – whatever the communication channel, we will continue as we always have to communicate clearly and honestly with our customers. If there are any changes or disruptions to our lead time or service, we will pro-actively tell you. We are not burying our heads in the sand, it helps no-one.
No Visitors or Visits – we are no longer accepting visitors to our facility nor are we visiting any clients in person ourselves. Deliveries are still welcome and handled with social distancing in mind.
Virtual Sales Appointment – we can continue to discuss and look at your work or application remotely in real-time using Zoom. Please contact us to schedule a Zoom appointment.
E-mail – we continue to monitor emails 24 hours a day and will respond at the earliest opportunity (usually the same day if within working hours) hello@sonicsolutionsltd.com.
Phone Line – as has always been the case we continue to operate a manned phone line (01924 495 975) during office hours and in case of an emergency you can reach us on 07974 442 583. With skeleton staff we may not always be able to answer calls immediately but we do check our messages and return calls once able to do so.
Live Chat – we have a live chat facility on our website and as with phone calls we attend to these messages as soon as we can. If we’re unable to answer immediately, please leave your contact details and your message and we will get back to you.
Internal WhatsApp Group – where social distancing measures prevent or make one to one verbal communication difficult, all members of the Sonic Solutions team are communicating effectively using WhatsApp to discuss internal matters.
As we always do, we will continue to work hard to support your business both during and after this crisis. If we’ve missed something or you’re unclear on anything please do get in touch and we’ll be happy to answer any questions.
If you are undertaking a new project that requires parts to be ultrasonically cleaned, a question you may ask is:
Should we undertake the cleaning ourselves or outsource it?
To decide which option is better for your business, there are several points that you should consider.
What volumes are you expecting to clean?
If you are only expecting a small volume of parts to need cleaning then it would be easier to outsource the cleaning work. Even a small industrial ultrasonic tank will cost upwards of £2000. If you only have 500 items that a cleaning company such as ourselves can clean for £1 per item, it makes much more financial sense to outsource.
Is the project ongoing?
This ties in with the volumes. Are you going to be producing a certain volume of parts per month indefinitely? Or is it just a few parts whenever they are ordered?
If you have a full production schedule where you know you will require ultrasonic cleaning for a given length of time, then it is a good idea to look into purchasing your own equipment.
How much budget do you have?
As I have already said, ultrasonic baths can be very expensive, especially if you are looking to clean large items. If you are working on a multi-million pound project then cost may not be an issue. But for most, a £50,000 investment in machinery cannot be taken lightly. Before you even consider purchasing your own ultrasonic bath, you should take a detailed look at your budget and see how much capital you have to work with. And yes, you can pick up a cheap 5 litre tank from amazon, but they are not designed for industrial use and will not be able to handle volume work.
Have you considered the additional costs?
As well as the initial expense of the tank, there are also the running costs that have to be considered.
Cleaning solution – The chemical that is added to the tank.
Power – The energy required to use the tank.
Waste disposal – The correct disposal of your waste solution.
Do you have the right personnel?
Are you going to have a dedicated member of staff to operate the tank or are your existing production staff going to take on the roll? Whatever you decide, you must ensure that whoever is operating the machine has adequate training to get the best results from it.
Other things to consider are the amenities needed for your own tank.
Do you have enough free floor space?
Do you have a water and power supply?
Is there adequate ventilation?
Have you considered health and safety factors?
When operating an ultrasonic tank, PPE must be worn to protect the operator from accidents. This is usually gloves, goggles, and an overall but some chemicals require a mask to be worn too. Wherever an ultrasonic tank is situated on a company’s premises they need to have a dedicated area where PPE must be worn beyond a certain point.
Do you just need it for one job?
If you are only producing one part that needs to be ultrasonically cleaned out of a large product range then you have to consider whether the machine is going to be used enough to warrant buying one. That said, once you have your own tank, it’s easy to find things that could do with an ultrasonic spruce up.
So when DOES it make sense to get your own machine?
We get a lot of enquiries from people looking into getting their own tank and around 80% of them are put off once they hear the cost of the tank they require. Unless you are cleaning volumes of parts on a regular basis, then it is best to leave it to the professionals and use an outsourced company like ourselves.
If your production is time-sensitive and you want to stay in control of the entire process then it makes sense to keep the cleaning in house. The logistics of sending out parts to a third party can add days to a production schedule and for some this is just not viable.
For a free trial clean, a no-obligation discussion, or even a visit when the current situation permits, just call us on 01924 495 975 or e-mail Toby on toby@sonicsolutionsltd.com
Here at Sonic Solutions, we pride ourselves in being experts in industrial cleaning. With a combined experience of nearly 30 years, we have seen hundreds of different items and contaminants from many different industries. Even with all this experience however, we can still make mistakes in assessing jobs.
Now to be clear, we are happy to take on any cleaning job. As long as we can fit it in our tanks, it doesn’t matter how dirty it is. Assuming the price is right for both parties, we will get stuck in without hesitation. Although our number one goal here at Sonic Solutions is to provide an outstanding service to help our customers with their cleaning needs, the pricing on jobs is relevant as it keeps the roof over our heads.
So what was ut about this job that was so bad I hear you ask?
The job came from a company that manufactured springs. They had hundreds of these rows of hooks that they would hang the springs on to spray with a coating. These hooks had been in process for over a year and had a large build-up of the coating on them. They approached us for assistance in cleaning them and we happily obliged. We found out that this coating softened up with heat and was fairly easy to remove so it shouldn’t be a big job. We quoted accordingly and got the job.
Now I can’t remember exactly how or why we came to this conclusion (we have probably suppressed the memory) but we were extremely wrong!
I remember first seeing them come in. Stacked a meter high on a pallet all tangled together. The sticky coating making them attach themselves to one another. And that was just the beginning !
Within 5 minutes of us starting, we knew we’d made a mistake. Yes the heat in the ultrasonic tank was enough to soften the coating. But it just turned into a gooey mess that stuck to everything it came into contact with. The coating was so thick that ultrasonics were ineffective, but we said we’d get them clean, and we are men of our words!
We had to change our approach. Like a knight whose sword was blunted, our main weapon of ultrasonic power was useless. We had to resort to more primitive techniques. We would place the rows of hooks in the heated bath to melt the coating down. Then sat over a bin, we used scrapers to go over each one and remove the thick of the contaminant.
Two days of scraping later and we have a pile of “almost” clean hooks. But will they be acceptable to the customer? We doubted it. And plus, we had our reputation to think about!
With ultrasonics being out of the question, we turned to another arrow in our quiver. Pyrolysis!
Pyrolysis works by heating items up to around 400 – 500°C in a vacuum chamber without oxygen. This removes any organic material leaving just your metal parts. So we resorted to pyrolysis to finish off the job.
By the time we had finished, the hooks were looking great and the customer was extremely happy. We may not have made any money on the job but we did learn a valuable lesson in the process including learning a lot more about pyrolysis as an alternative or complementary process to ultrasonics. A lesson which is paying great dividends in our work in other areas like plastics recycling.
We have always offered a trial clean to customers as a way to prove our process to people but it also has another purpose. When we are quoting for a job that we have never done, a trial clean helps us to iron out the process that we will use. From choosing the right chemistry to working out how long a job will take, a trial clean helps us understand the ins and outs that will be required for a job and allows us to quote accordingly.
Since then we have still mispriced jobs. I don’t think there is a company around that hasn’t. But we now take extra care to think through each job in more detail to avoid a repeat of the hooks. We still joke about them to this day and we even kept one of them (with permission) in our office as a reminder. We did throw it away when we moved unit a couple of years ago but the lesson still sticks with us.
Do you have a cleaning job that could become our new worst job ever? For a free trial clean, a no-obligation discussion, or even a visit when the current situation permits, just call us on 01924 495 975 or e-mail Toby on toby@sonicsolutionsltd.com
Ultrasonic cleaning is most commonly used for cleaning metal parts but we occasionally get asked ‘does ultrasonic cleaning work with…’ a variety of other materials including plastics.
Understanding Plastic Materials
Plastic materials are widely used in manufacturing and come in different forms, each with its unique properties. There are two types of plastics, thermoplastics and thermosetting plastics.Thermoplastics can be melted and re-molded multiple times without losing their properties. These plastics include polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene. On the other hand, thermosetting plastics undergo a chemical reaction when heated, which causes them to become hard and inflexible. Examples of thermosetting plastics include epoxy resins and phenolic resins.
Does Ultrasonic Cleaning Work with Plastic Materials?
The effectiveness of ultrasonic cleaning on plastic materials depends on the type of plastic being cleaned. Plastic is not the most favourable material for ultrasonic cleaning. There will always be cleaning action taking place in the tank, but how effective it is depends on the density of the plastic.Ultrasonic cleaning works better on harder plastics like polyether ether ketone (PEEK) and most thermoplastics as they can withstand the high-frequency sound waves produced during the cleaning process without undergoing any damage or losing their properties but there are still limitations. Ultrasonic cleaning can work really well for removing light contaminants such as the powdered releasing agent from injection moulding, but when it comes to tougher contaminants, the results can be fairly underwhelming.Low density, flexible and thermosetting plastics such as low-density polyethylene (LDPE), are not suitable for ultrasonic cleaning as they are prone to cracking and damage when subjected to the high-frequency sound waves. They actually absorb some of the ultrasonic power, lessening the cleaning action. Another big problem with this type of low-density plastic is that the items usually float on the solution meaning there isn’t total coverage and therefore not a total clean unless the parts are “held” underwater in an inverted basket.
Things to Consider When Choosing Ultrasonic Cleaning for Plastics
If you do decide that ultrasonic cleaning is the best option for cleaning your plastic parts, here are some things you should consider:
Does the part float?
If the answer is yes, then you will need to rig something up so it is held completely under the solution.
How heavily contaminated is your item?
If it is completely covered in a thick oil for example, it will take longer, it may require a multi-stage ultrasonic clean, and it will need to be thoroughly rinsed with clean water at the end to make sure none of the contamination has reattached itself from the solution.
Can your item handle the heat?
We generally operate ultrasonic tanks from 40 – 60°C. Some plastics may begin to distort when held at these temperatures for a longer period of time.
Is the chemistry safe for your material?
Some ultrasonic cleaning chemicals may not be safe to use with plastic parts. This is especially true for solvent-based solutions.
What are the alternatives to ultrasonic cleaning?
The very best alternative if you are looking for a deep clean for plastic parts is to clean them by hand. If you are using the correct solution, your contaminant should lift straight off without much issue. For tougher contaminants, it may require a bit of elbow grease, but it can be done. If you have a large batch where hand-cleaning will take months, it may also be worth looking into spray washing (I’ve heard a dishwasher will work if you are in a pickle!).
So Does Ultrasonic Cleaning Work With Plastics?
As an ultrasonic cleaning company, it pains us to say that ultrasonics isn’t the best cleaning method for everything, and we have to hold our hands up and admit that generally for plastic materials, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard. For the removal of light contaminants from hard plastics, it’s worth a shot but always be aware that you may be required to do some hand-cleaning to finish them off.For a free trial clean, a no-obligation discussion, or even a visit, just call us on 01924 495 975 or e-mail us at hello@sonicsolutionsltd.com
Typically the parts we ultrasonic clean for plastic recyclers are the filters, the heat exchangers, the print rollers and other precision-engineered parts that have small holes or internal cavities that require cleaning. They are difficult, if not impossible, to clean through conventional jet washing, soak or other abrasive methods. They also tend to have small particulate contamination and are expensive to replace.
Let’s look at each in turn;
Oil filters from hydraulic or lubrication systems for fast-moving parts.
Filters – these come in all shapes, sizes and function but the most common filters in plastic recycling are;
Laser disc filters, or hot melt filters, used to filter remaining contamination from the plastic being treated;
Extraction filters used to keep the work environment free of dust, oil and other airborne contaminants;
Oil filters from hydraulic or lubrication systems for fast-moving parts.
Ultrasonic cleaning with the right chemistry for the relevant contaminant is ideal to remove small particulate from small openings and internal cavities typical of filters.
Heat exchangers – Most machines that work under high pressures and/or for long periods reach temperatures above their optimal working conditions and therefore require some form of cooling. This is done via heat exchangers, sometimes water-based, sometimes oil-based or even air-based coolers. By their very nature, the cooling media will create and then deposit particulate matter within the cooling mechanism. Over time this will reduce its effectiveness until it no longer performs its function. The removal of this contaminant is essential for it to continue doing its job. Ultrasonic cleaning reaches all surface areas of the part submerged in the cleaning solution, including internal cavities. With the right chemistry, any type of contaminant can be removed, from scale and rust to carbon and solidified oils.
Print Rollers – A lot of plastic is essentially packaging and therefore is ultimately printed upon to identify its contents or promote its producer. Many plastic recyclers offer some printing on the plastics they manufacture from recycled product. And this printing process on packaging material often users print rollers to carry the ink. These rollers are precision engineered to carry precise volumes of the ink but over time get dirty and cannot carry the necessary volumes of ink for good print quality. Ultrasonic cleaning is a well-proven method for restoring these rollers to full volume and optimal print quality.
All the parts mentioned above share common features. They are commonly highly engineered, high performance, high value and highly critical to the overall process of recycling plastic and converting to the desired end product. The alternative to ultrasonic cleaning is either replacement or highly laborious and time consuming manual cleaning that is usually only partially or temporarily effective.
If this sounds familiar because you either have the parts mentioned above or you have another cleaning issue then the chances are we can help, saving you time and money, improving the quality of your end product, and reducing your stress levels. Just get in touch and we’ll be happy to discuss your options, how we can help, and offer you a free trial clean to prove it will work for you.
For a free trial clean, a no-obligation discussion, or even a visit when the current situation permits, just call us on 01924 495 975 or e-mail Andrew on andrew@sonicsolutionsltd.com
Welcome to the Sonic Solutions Knowledge Center. This is the Go-To resource for Industrial Ultrasonic & Parts Cleaning and is updated regularly. If we haven’t already written about a particular aspect of Industrial Ultrasonic Cleaning, Pyrolysis, Thermal Stripping, Media Blasting or Jet Washing that you’re interested in, then please submit your enquiry here and one of our Industrial Cleaning Experts will take a look.
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We approached Sonic Solutions after our parts manufacturers let us down and wasted precious time by supplying oily parts. Not only were they friendly, helpful and happy to rush our parts through - the quality was unbelievable! They arrived back at our factory just in time to not hold up production and we couldn't recommend them highly enough.
Martin Frings
Our company AssetCool found the entire team at Sonic Solutions to be responsive and incredibly supportive of a new project. Their technical knowledge is superb, and they delivered exactly what they promised. We're very happy to recommend them to anyone with ultrasonic cleaning needs, and look forward to working with them again in the future.
Tonia Parris
I reached out with a problem to various companies prior to talking with Sonic Solutions, most were unhelpful. These guys insisted on the first trial being for free! The job was excellent and the turn around time very impressive. We are now setting up a monthly cleaning regime with them. A joy to deal with.
Andy Sim
The 2021 Ultimate Guide to Industrial Ultrasonic Cleaning
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