When you look into a modern, highly automated production facility from the outside, it may come as a surprise to you that there is a high degree of automation in the area of machining and many other processes - but in the cleanliness laboratory, employees are busy running from A to B, working and evaluating by hand. In view of the development of standards for technical cleanliness, it is quite understandable that many responsible parties are reluctant to change established processes. And the analysis and evaluation of cleanliness inspections according to the standard procedure of VDA 19 is undoubtedly one of these tried and tested procedures. However, the procedure is time-consuming and also highly dependent on the care and skills of the person carrying it out. In particular, only random sampling is possible with a reasonable amount of personnel. The pressure for ever more complete documentation of production parameters and the shortage of skilled workers are reasons to consider alternatives.
Automated cleanliness checks every minute
The beginnings of automated cleanliness inspection go back more than ten years and were actually more admired than actually used back then. There is still a remarkable degree of skepticism and reluctance in this regard, even though the measuring capabilities of the technology have developed in leaps and bounds since then and the informative value of the results has long been on a par with a standard evaluation in accordance with VDA 19 - while the entire inspection process takes place in a fraction of the time of the standard procedure. These two aspects mean that such automated inspection systems for technical cleanliness can pay for themselves surprisingly quickly due to the lower personnel costs alone. There is also the aspect of tighter production control and thus reduced quality costs.
You can read more about the current possibilities for automated cleanliness control - from the evaluation of extraction to fully automated rinsing cabinets - in the September issue of the magazine for surface technology or shortly online at oberflaeche.de.