Ultrasonics clean up effectively for plating

Ultrasonic clean and rinse systems effectively remove polishing compounds before electro-plating from items as diverse as door furniture: handles to motorcycle components.

Guyson International - who acquired Kerry Ultrasonics early in 2004, is now providing manufacturing, sales, support and service from its extensive 10,000m2 facility in Skipton in the North of England, for the Kerry Pulsatron UCR (ultrasonic clean and rinse) systems.

Pulsatron UCR systems effectively remove polishing compounds before electro-plating from items as diverse as door furniture: handles, plates, letterboxes and locks, light fixtures, bathroom fittings, auto and motorcycle components to intricate electronic and audio components, where any contamination remaining on the product would result in poor adhesion and lifting of the plate.

With all aqueous wash tanks a detergent additive is essential to ensure effective removal of contaminants.

To avoid potential staining of the cleaned parts by detergent residues adhering to the surface subsequent water rinsing is critically important.

The UCR two-tank system incorporates both ultrasonic cleaning and immersion/spray rinsing to overcome this problem leaving parts completely residue free and ready for processing.

The latest Kerry UCR systems have been designed to achieve optimum cleaning results.

Ultrasonic transducers bonded to the tank base provide high performance and reliability together with uniform distribution of the ultrasonic energy.

The frequency is tuned to the individual tank/transducer combination and then optimised under normal usage conditions with frequency sweep and fully automatic tuning.

Pulsatron UCR tanks allow the user to pre-set exact cleaning times and temperatures, ensuring consistent levels of cleanliness from batch to batch and providing an affordable way to improve cleaning quality.

All functions are controlled by a simple four-button membrane keypad.

An LCD panel displays the temperature and time set by the user, the time elapsed since the start of the cleaning process, and the status of the power supply, heater and ultrasonics.

Each unit works within operating temperatures from 20 to 80 deg C which can be set in 1-degree increments, allowing the optimum temperature to be selected for a particular combination of component material, cleaning solution and contaminant.

Sonics time may be set in the range 0.1 up to 99.9 minutes in 0.1 min increments, or to constant when sonics may be switched on and off manually.

Automatic safety devices include non-operation of sonics if solution temperature is more than 10 deg C above set temperature, and low-level protection to prevent heater burn-out if solution level drops.

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