Cleaning of contaminated parts and components is an absolute must to bring the parts to their original working condition. It increases the operational efficiency. If the volume of cleaning required is massive, manual cleaning is ruled out. One has to opt for mechanized cleaning so as to avoid downtime and enhance productivity.
Gala Precision Engineering, known for its standing and reputation for over 25 years, offers one stop solutions for deburring, finishing, washing & cleaning of machinery parts on a mass scale.
“When you switch over to machine cleaning, you save up to 40% on expenses incurred on account of parts cleaning,” says Anand Kaundanya, Chief Operating Officer, Gala Precision. Gala, known for its profound domain knowledge and vast experience, conceptualizes, designs and builds cleaning machines, most of them customized to suit specific requirements.
Steps to optimize savings
Gala recommends the following four steps to optimize savings in the industry:
- Switch over from manual process to mechanized cleaning: In case of multi-stage cleaning, one can achieve substantial reduction in labour cost. This also enables improving productivity of the cleaning operation and consistency of the cleaning process.
- Regular preventive maintenance of machines: With this simple step, expensive breakdowns and downtime can be avoided. This results in lower maintenance costs. Regular maintenance also saves on investments on inventory of spares.
- Optimum consumption of compounds: With regular cleaning of filter bag and systematic maintenance of oil separation mechanism, the bath life can be enhanced drastically, thus resulting in reduced chemical usage. Maintaining specified process parameters like temperature, cleaning consistency can be achieved over a long period of time.
- Controlling power consumption: Gala offers special compounds which work on low temperature / room temperature. This leads to substantial reduction in heating load. Optimum design of heater banks will enable savings in electricity and the power cost.
Perfect remedies
Gala has a number of case studies quantifying the savings achieved in specific applications at customers’ places. One such case is the solution it provided to a customer for removing oil, loose chips and burr from mine hammer assembly parts where the input contamination was 10 mg Millipore and the output cleaning requirement was 2mg Millipore. The client was using manual wash involving high labour, improper cleaning, lower productivity, and high cleaning cost. Gala studied this problem and recommended a Multistage Ultrasonic Cleaning System using the Alkaline degreasing compound as the cleaning media. The process involved ultrasonic cleaning in the first stage, rinsing in the second stage and hot air drying in the final stage. The result was excellent. The client acknowledged the three tangible benefits viz.
(a) Uniform cleaning
(b) No manual intervention, and
(c) 70% Reduction in labour cost.
In the 2nd case, the component was a Brake pad which had to be cleaned from dirt, dust and oil, achieving an output of 2.8 mg Millipore. The client was using cloth and manual cleaning. Gala supplied a Conveyorised Spray Washing Machine and an Alkline degreasing compound for spray wash, rinsing and hot air drying. This enhanced the productivity by 80%.
In the 3rd case, the components involved were Aerosol Aluminium parts which needed to be kept free from heavy drawing oil, dust, dirt and dull finish inside. The party was already using Vibratory finishing and manual cleaning. Gala recommended switch over to Two Stage Ultrasonic Cleaning and Steel ball vibratory finishing. The degreasing, was done using Alkaline compound as the media. With this the customer could achieve 100% oil removal without any manual intervention. The finish turned out to be consistent and the productivity also improved substantially.
In yet another case, the problem posed was removal of heavy grease, oil and dirt from bearings. The client was using spray wash up to 10 bar resulting in insufficient and inconsistent cleaning. Gala offered them a Conveyorised Multistage High Pressure Spray Washing Machine involving processes like high pressure spray wash up to 10-12 bar, rinsing and hot air drying. This resulted in 100% removal of grease and oil, and uniform cleaning.
Delighting the customer
The above are only some recent examples of Gala’s comprehensive solutions that delight the customer. As of now, the company has over 5000 systems installed in India and abroad which are giving peak performance at customers’ places.
Gala’s product range includes Multi-stage Ultrasonic Cleaning System, Cylindrical Rotary Screw Spray Cleaning System, Single Chamber Multi-Process Cleaning Equipment, Phosphating Plant, Vibratory Finishing & Washing System, Vibratory De-scaling, Degreasing & Drying System, etc. Gala provides surface engineering solutions to sectors as diverse as aerospace & defence, automotive, precision engineering, consumer products and so on. It has an ever-growing customer base. “At least 40% of our business comes from repeat orders. That’s proof enough of the high quality of our products and services endorsed by our customers,” remarks Anand Kaundanya .
Article by P.K. Balasubbramaniian
