Remanufacturing plays an increasingly important role in industrial production processes and this trend will surely keep gaining popularity in the nearest future. This sector is associated with economic benefits resulting from lower prices of regenerated parts in comparison to the new ones, and some environmental benefits that appear as a result of reusing the manufactured products. What is the parts remanufacturing process?

Remanufacturing and the possibility of reusing materials are becoming an increasingly common option among manufacturers from the automotive and aerospace industry. It is a process consisting of dismantling, cleaning and repair of the components, which is to restore their high quality and make them usable again. After remanufacturing process, each part is tested in order to check if a high quality was ensured and if the technical parameters of parts are compliant with the specification.

An important element of the remanufacturing process is cleaning parts from contamination that is layered. Cleaning with manual machines is time-consuming and requires big amount of work. Investment in fast and automated cleaning processes, which ensures reliable quality is the key to success in this industry. Automation and robotization significantly simplify production processes including regeneration. There are many solutions for the optimization of such operations.

Challenge

A manufacturer from the automotive parts regeneration sector turned to NOYEN for help with making the removal of contamination more effective, while reducing the cost of the process.

The aim was also to reduce the number of parts that, after having undergone a remanufacturing process, did not meet the criteria for reuse.

To solve was also the problem of the high foaming level of the cleaning agents. What is more, the foregoing process required three cleaning machines used consecutively for cleaning one type of parts. Bath was exchanged every two days. One of the investment goals was to define the quality of parts before remanufacturing process that was to eliminate the parts that cannot be used afterward and, as a result, avoid costs. Before the beginning of cooperation with NOYEN the company used a scraping method – manual method of removing contamination.

Solution

NOYEN recommended a complete process of removing accumulated oxides (surface corrosion) and degreasing, carried out in the NOYEN COMPACT 100 – cleaning machine with spray and ultrasonic cleaning functions and with the use of effective and safe NOYEN TIP3 and NOYEN AS agents.

The cooperation resulted in the purchase of four NOYEN cleaning machines. The development of the regeneration process in a new form allowed to increase work efficiency and reduce the number of suppliers of cleaning agents to one. The obvious choice was the manufacturer of cleaning machines and equipment, who also offered industrial chemicals. In this way, it was possible to obtain one supplier for the entire process.

Thanks to the implementation of the process in the new form, the company saves ca. €10 000 per month. Such means might be used for further development of the company and implementation of new solutions.

The reduction of the costs of the cleaning process was influenced by:

• Shortening the cycle from 15 to 8 minutes after implementing NOYEN chemicals;
• Reduction of bath exchange frequency – exchange is carried out every seven, instead of every two, days;
• Excluding time-consuming and expensive manual method of removing contamination and replacing three types of machine with one;
• Increase in cleaning process quality – a guarantee of normalized and constant quality of cleaning and drying of parts;
• Adjusting product to the specific character of the process conducting in the company of the client and production line type.

Thanks to the solutions implemented in purchased cleaning machines, the quality of parts significantly increased. New cleaning technology allows effective removal of carbon deposits, grease and burnt oils as well as including smaller and strongly oily parts in the process. It was also possible to eliminate the necessity to repeat the cleaning process. What was improved, was also the work environment of the people supervising the process – the investment in new, efficient machines resulted not only in the cost decrease but also in the increase in employees safety. What is more, NOYEN experts support the client and are available for consultations at every stage of the process.

Konrad Drobek

Technical Advisor Engineer with over 10 years of experience in the field of automatics, cleaning process optimization and designing of cleaning machines. He takes an active part in project development and tests of possible solutions. Thanks to his extensive knowledge of cleaning technologies in production processes he advises clients in the process of selection and implementation of new technological solutions.