2021 Workshop Agenda

What a success!

Here is the agenda for our recent Product Quality Cleaning Workshop, which streamed live May 10th - 20th, 2021.

Week One

Day 1 - Monday, May 10

Classroom: Why cleaning is important
Avoid downtime and costly problems; stop chasing your tail. We explain how critical cleaning, precision cleaning, and surface prep can solve manufacturing problems in such areas as:

Metal fabrication/finishing
Automotive
Aerospace
Advanced automotive
Medical
Pharmaceuticals
Botanicals, including cannabis
Electronics
Nanotechnology
Optics
We will address cleaning problems faced by these and other specialized manufacturing areas during the course of the workshop.

Lab: Visual inspection on steroids
We will demonstrate simple (often inexpensive) approaches to observe, document, and sometimes quantify visual inspection using cameras and microscopes. Understand how to capture images in a standard manner so you can nip product contamination problems in the bud and make process troubleshooting faster. The skills from this lab session will allow more productive interaction with current and potential customers.

Day 2 - Tuesday, May 11

Classroom: Water? Solvent? Something else? Part 1
What cleaning process is best for your manufacturing application? Choosing a process because “That’s the way we’ve always done it” or “if the stuff in the blue bottle doesn’t work, try the stuff in the red bottle.” can waste money, increase downtime, and make customers grumble. Make smart decisions! Topics include combatting label phobia, cleaning agent formulations, physical properties of cleaning agents, and the cleaning process. You will also learn about how to avoid pesky microbes.

Lab: Make oil and water mix
Aqueous cleaning can remove grimy, sticky, adherent particles and thin-film residue. Participate in two series of exercises and demonstrations that show you how to get the most value from your aqueous cleaning processes. First, take some of the mystery out of what’s in the blue or red bottle! You won’t become a formulations chemist, but you will discover how the complex components of an aqueous cleaning agent come together. Next, unleash the magic of ultrasonics to achieve a reliably cleaned product. Too many manufacturers purchase ultrasonic cleaning systems but don’t use them to their full advantage. They may set up processes that actually impede ultrasonic effectiveness. In this lab, you will see what happens when we change the settings and test the variables.

Day 3 - Wednesday, May 12

Lab: Make oil and water mix, continued
The lab continues with ultrasonics demonstrations including the pros and cons of foil, graphite, and hydrophones to test ultrasonic functionality. You will also see techniques to evaluate rinsing – rinsing is a cleaning must for water and solvent processes! You will see demonstrations of the physical limitations of aqueous processes.

Classroom: Water? Solvent? Something else? Part 2
Aqueous processes can’t be used in all situations – the same holds true for solvent cleaning. When you understand the pros and cons of cleaning options, you can make realistic, productive choices. We’ll delve into how solvents work, including solubility parameters, flammability, and azeotropic blends (which have become more important with increased regulations). You will understand where and how to use “non-chemical” or “non-liquid” cleaning processes.

Day 4 - Thursday, May 13

Lab: Choose the right solvent; understand flammability
Not all solvents are equal. Learn how the adage “like dissolves like” works. We will test solvents and show what "like" means. Demonstrations will teach quantitative solvency parameters. Learn nuances of flashpoints for flammable solvents. After this lab, you will be able to cut through the fog of technical terms surrounding solvent cleaning to make the best decisions for your cleaning process.

Classroom: A cleaning process that works - achieve it faster without breaking the bank.
You don’t need nerves of steel to move to a new cleaning process or fix a semi-dysfunctional cleaning process. We’ll show you the true, hidden costs of process change including the costs of indecision. You will learn how to get the right people on-board, how to manage upper management, how to discover what your customer actually wants (including unreasonable expectations), and how to keep your suppliers from undoing everything. You will also learn techniques to evaluate the process, make the decision, and get the process up and running.

Week Two

Day 5 - Monday, May 17

Classroom: The real dirt about dirt!
Why soil sticks. Get the dirt off of the product without damaging the product. Particles, thin films, mixtures, living dirt - you want it gone. You will learn what makes dirt stick, including the design of the part and manufacturing methods. Cleaning methods, including fixturing during cleaning, can help or hurt effective processes. We will show you how the boundary layer can thwart even valiant attempts at cleaning; you will learn how the relatively new technique of vacuum cavitation can overcome boundary layer limitations.

Discover the importance of materials compatibility. “Like dissolves like” which can mean that “like destroys like”. Avoid product damage while maximizing cleaning power. You will learn techniques to avoid costly mistakes in choosing cleaning agents and cleaning equipment.

Lab: Collect, observe and analyze particles
Welcome to the dust bowl. Particles can ruin the look of a part and in many cases can destroy the function of the part. Learn how to track down your particle problems with this lab’s wiping, extraction, and inspection techniques. We will show effective wiping of surfaces, visual monitoring of particulate removal in ultrasonic cleaning using graphite, and image analysis techniques for characterizing particles.

Day 6 - Tuesday, May 18

Classroom: Cleanrooms and contamination control, Featuring Scott Mackler.

“Of course it is clean. We have a cleanroom!” Moving a component into the cleanroom or setting up a cleaning process in the cleanroom does not assure a clean product. We will discuss cleanrooms, when you need one, and how to employ one to enhance the quality of your product. We help you to use cleanroom real estate to your best advantage, including discussing those processes that should not be in a cleanroom.

Lab: Surface testing for cleanliness
Process monitoring does not have to empty your wallet. We will demonstrate many low-cost quick tests for cleanliness. You will learn the strengths and weaknesses of the water break test, dyne pens, contact angle, and fluorescence to characterize the cleanliness of the surface. These tests can be used economically every day for process monitoring that avoids costly analytical testing.

Day 7 - Wednesday, May 19

Classroom: Regulations, Rules, and Standards
Avoid the frustration of developing a superior cleaning process only to discover that the cleaning agent or cleaning equipment can’t be used. In this session, you will learn skills to navigate the ever-changing landscape of regulations, rules, policies, and standards.

Topics include:

Avoiding unpleasant surprises - like discovering that your favorite, effective cleaning agent is being regulated out of existence.
New developments at the EPA that cover both worker safety and environmental safety, including consequences for open-top vapor degreasing
Avoiding panic (Do you have to use a “safe” cleaning agent that doesn’t work.)
Communicating with the FDA
What happens when your Company’s Management or Safety/environmental group or your customer raises roadblocks.
Standard philosophy – understand and manage industry standards without being buried by them
Lab: Specialized cleaning systems
Learn all about solvent cleaning systems. Participants will see demonstrations of solvent cleaning systems, comparing open-top degreasers with “airless systems.” Airless systems provide a high level of cleaning process consistency and control; future regulations could highly favor their use. We also demonstrate vacuum cycle cavitation; these cleaning systems that provide a different type of cleaning action are advantageous for tight spacing, blind holes, syringes, and cannulae.

Day 8 - Thursday, May 20

Lab: What’s contaminating the product?
So, the Englishman asks the waiter “What’s this you served me?” The waiter says “Bean soup.” The Englishman says: “I don’t care what it’s been; I want to know what it is.”

The residue left on the part may be very different than the original soil. To remove (or avoid) the residue, it helps to characterize it. Today’s demonstrations and exercises provide tools to characterize the soils and residue remaining on the product. Learn about techniques such as Paper/Thin Layer Chromatography, Raman, and FTIR Spectroscopy.

Classroom: Working with the analytical lab; process monitoring
There’s a product contamination problem; you pay for analytical tests; then, you have no idea what the results mean. We help you demystify analytical testing. Understand the similarities and distinctions between cleaning, extraction, and detection; understand how analytical testing works. You will be able to cut to the chase of contamination problems without breaking the bank. We will also discuss maintaining monitoring, and troubleshooting the cleaning system.

Official Media Sponsor

Thank you Gardner Business Media, publisher of Products Finishing and Production Machining magazines, for your partnership as the official media sponsor of the Product Quality Cleaning Workshop.

Gardner Business Media is the premier publisher in the manufacturing sector and publishes brands that serve all aspects of discrete parts manufacturing. Products Finishing (application of coatings) and Production Machining (small parts machining) magazines have been serving their respective fields for decades. Once a quarter a Parts Cleaning Section is published between both magazines which provides the market the latest trends in technology along with best practices for cleaning professionals. This section publishes to over 50,000 subscribers and is the only trade journal in the US focused on industrial cleaning applications.