Cleaning Very Small Parts

Question:

How are very small sheet metal parts cleaned with an aqueous solution? Because of surface tension, these parts stick to each other. Moreover, jigging them separately takes lot of man-hours. Please suggest a suitable mechanism to clean these parts. Thanks. V.D.

Answer:

Small parts are effectively cleaned with the assistance of mechanical agitation. A common method used with small parts in immersion cleaning is a tumbling basket. Here parts are continuously rotated in a closed basket. The movement helps both in cleaning of the parts and separation. Suppliers of this type of equipment can be found on page 333 of the 2000 edition of the Products Finishing Directory and Technology Guide under the category Barrel Finishing Equipment.

You did not mention your process steps, but it is often necessary to remove burrs from small sheet metal parts. If you currently perform this operation (or need to add it in the future), there is mass-finishing (deburring) equipment that can be used with an aqueous cleaner solution. This will both deburr and remove light oils from the parts while keeping them separated.