Conveyorised tunnel washers raise wheel quality

Two conveyorised tunnel washers installed in a Czech automotive wheel-manufacturing factory use a wash, dry and cool process cycle to remove stains, oils and contaminants from car wheels.

Guyson International has recently installed two conveyorised Marr-Line tunnel washers into an automotive wheel-manufacturing factory in the Czech Republic to improve quality assurance.

Both systems have been designed around 1000mm wide cross rod conveyors, needed for extra strength due to the heavy loadings of the components - aluminium diecast machined car wheels.

The Marr-Line tunnel washer is specified as a modular concept of standard build units, allowing maximum flexibility in design and cost effectiveness in meeting process requirements.

Both machines incorporate a wash, dry and cool process cycle.

This permutation, proven through trials at Guyson's Skipton development center was decided upon as the minimum requirement to clean the aluminium car wheels of production stains, oils and contaminants - including shot blast dust and media.

The washing is achieved in a high-pressure spray-washing chamber with a 350 litre/min stainless steel vertical pump flushing wash solution through 44 x 8 litre/min wash jets, creating a deluge of cleaning force.

The machines are equipped with extended 1000 litre wash tanks and a multitude of heaters generating nearly 100kW of heat in each machine.

This volume being needed due to the large surface area of the components, absorbing high volumes of heat out of the wash tanks.

This heat retention created further challenges, as the wheels have to be quickly cooled down to around 40 deg C to enable them to be handled whilst moving onto the next process.

A cooling process is used to blow cool air across the components to reduce their temperature to a manageable level.

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