If you need clean industrial parts in whatever business you run, there are several cleaning methods for you to consider. Some methods are appropriate for specific applications—and really, no one method is ideal for all applications. That said, ultrasonic cleaning, which serves as the foundation of the products that we at UltraSonic LLC sell, is an ideal solution for many industrial, automotive, aerospace and medical applications.
Your business, like any business, exists to turn a profit (hopefully, a nice one). Profit depends on many variables, and chief among them is the ability to minimize costs without sacrificing product or service quality.
In this regard, we talk with many people – at trade shows, networking events and in the normal course of business – who tell us how time-consuming and unpleasant the task of hand washing industrial parts is. It’s not hard to see why: The employees on the shop floor hate it—hand washing parts is hard manual labor, it’s dirty and it doesn’t always get the job done right, especially when it comes to cleaning parts with crevices, grooves and hidden areas. Above all, hand washing parts eats away valuable time that can be spent on more profitable activities.
Simply put, time is money, and hand washing industrial parts is wasting money.
In this blog post, we provide you with a quick rundown of the representative cost savings that can be realized by incorporating ultrasonic cleaning throughout your industrial operation—and replacing hand washing of parts in the process. First though, we’d like to briefly recap what ultrasonic cleaning is, and how it works to clean parts.
How Ultrasonic Cleaning Technology Works
Ultrasonic cleaning uses cavitation bubbles induced by high-frequency pressure (sound) waves to agitate a liquid. The agitation produces high forces on contaminants adhering to substrates like metals, plastics, glass, rubber and ceramics. This action also penetrates blind holes, cracks and recesses. The intention is to thoroughly remove all traces of contamination tightly adhering or embedded onto solid surfaces. Water or solvents can be used, depending on the type of contamination and the part.
Watch a video that shows how ultrasonic cleaning technology works.
Price Comparison: Ultrasonic Cleaning vs. Hand-Washing
Ultrasonic cleaning delivers significant cost savings over hand washing industrial parts in nearly every situation we can think of. Ultrasonic cleaning is quick and easy, and it takes a fraction of the time of hand washing industrial parts. Even when you’re tasked with cleaning a small number of parts, the labor savings can be significant. But when you need to wash hundreds, or even thousands, of parts over the course of an entire year, the savings really add up.
Let’s say you purchase an UltraSonic LLC 3200FA, our high-performance 65-gallon workhorse, and one of our most popular ultrasonic cleaning machines. Let’s further suppose that the UltraSonic LLC 3200FA can save you a minimum of one hour per day in cleaning time. That’s conservative – many of our customers report saving two hours or more of cleaning time each day – but again, we want to err on the conservative side. If your hourly shop rate is $75, then five hours per week of time saved equals $375. Twenty hours per month of time saved equals $1,500. Annually, your 240 hours of time saved equals $18,000. And over five years – the term of your 3200FA lease – your savings comes out to $90,000.
Suppose the 3200FA saves you two hours of cleaning time per day. Those numbers double. Suppose your hourly shop rate is $100; again, the numbers significantly rise.
Other Costs to Consider
Beyond the cost savings realized by using ultrasonic cleaning over hand washing industrial parts, other methods for cleaning parts carry a host of up-front and hidden costs. We covered this topic in a previous blog; you can read it here.
As we have addressed in previous blogs, it is essential to keep industrial parts clean in any industrial setting, for any industrial process. Clean parts help keep machinery running smoothly; they help to mitigate any process flaws or errors; they protects sensitive industrial parts and components from damage, corrosion or contamination; and they help to promote quality in nearly every facet of an industrial operation.
If you have questions about industrial parts cleaning methods or industrial parts cleaners – or if you would like information about ultrasonic cleaning for industrial applications and UltraSonic LLC industrial cleaning machines, fill out this contact form, and an UltraSonic LLC representative will be in touch shortly to discuss your requirement.