What Cleanliness Standards do You Work to?

Most companies that come to us for cleaning will usually have a specific cleaning standard they are looking to achieve. Some of these standards are historic, set up when the parts were first designed. One we were asked to clean to was from 1983!

The standards we have asked to follow range from MOD Defence standards to aerospace to ISO standards relating to specific industries. We have successfully cleaned to all these.

Can you certify your cleans?

Yes and no. We do not have all the equipment at our site to do these sort of tests as it requires a variety of specialised instruments often working in a cleanroom environment which we do not have. We approach the validation process by performing a clean on parts which can be then sent off for testing by a third party or the customer themselves. When these parts meet the required cleaning standard or specification, we then certify the cleaning process we used. In fact, this approach is the same one used by most MOD specifications which detail the cleaning process to be followed that results in the desired level of cleanliness.

We then work to these standard defined procedures on all future jobs and provide a certificate of conformance to guarantee the parts were cleaned using the approved process. Our ISO:9000:2015 quality assurance certification acts as the validation of our internal systems that support this process.
We have done this for companies in the defence, oil and gas, aviation, pharmaceutical, and medical industries with no issues over the last 15 years.

Can Sonic Solutions help us define our own cleaning standards?

Of course! Sometimes a customer may not themselves be able to strictly define the cleanliness standard they require. In this situation, we have reverse-engineered the cleaning process to arrive at their required standard. We have cleaned sample batches of parts to different levels of cleanliness. We then send them off for testing (or the customer tests them in-house) and the customer establishes the “pass” level of cleanliness. We can then define the process used to achieve that level and certify all future cleans to guarantee they have been through the set process to achieve that desired level of cleanliness. It is a classic case of designing the quality/cleanliness level into the process adopted rather than testing the quality in, resulting in greater confidence levels of the quality achieved together with lower costs of achieving it.

To understand more about ultrasonic cleaning and how it might benefit you and your application please call or email one of our helpful cleaning experts today on 01924 938052 or hello@sonicsolutionsltd.com