Parts washers

Sometimes known as a parts cleaner, a hotwasher or hotwash, a cleaning cabinet or even a pot washer, a parts washer is a machine designed to remove a variety of soils and contaminating substances from components. The simplest manual versions are little more than sinks with a hose that sprays cleaning fluid onto the item being cleaned, but the best parts parts washers are automatic machines (similar to industrial dishwashers) that can handle large items or loads with ease, and provide consistent high-quality cleaning, and even rinsing and drying.

Cleaning with an automatic parts washer cabinet involves loading the parts to be cleaned onto basket or platform inside the machine. Once closed, the machine sprays heated, pressurised cleaning solution down onto the parts as the platform rotates. In multi-stage machines, this can then be followed by rinsing and drying cycles. Manual parts washers work by spraying the cleaning fluid directly onto the dirty parts through a hand-held hose as the user moves the parts around and potentially brushes off accumulations of dirt.

Traditionally, parts washers clean using solvents made from oil. These are hazardous, highly flammable and difficult to dispose of or recycle. Modern parts washers use ‘aqueous’ water-based cleaning fluids instead, which are safer for workers, kinder to the environment and capable of cleaning at least as effectively as solvents. These fluids are heated to increase effectiveness, and flow through the machine during the cleaning cycle. Used fluids are collected and either filtered to remove waste before reuse or stored safely as waste for easy removal, replacement and disposal.

Modern parts washers can be used on much more than just metal parts. As well as screws and bolts, engine blocks and carburettors, a parts washer can also clean items made of ceramics, glass, plastics and even rubber effectively without damage. And, while the most common contaminants remain grease, dirty oil, dust and other particles, with the right combination of machine and parts cleaning solution it is possible to remove waxes, coolants, and even paints, inks, limescale and rust. This flexibility means that parts washers can provide inter-operational cleaning for a range of manufacturing, maintenance and repair processes from surface treatment and passivation to sanitisation, product testing and quality control.

The best way to keep a parts washer clean is to have a programme of regular preventative maintenance. Every Safetykleen machine has key parts that need to be removed, inspected and cleaned at every service to maintain cleaning performance. Filters are especially important and should be removed and replaced regularly because it’s the filtering process that protects other parts of the machine (such as pumps and seals) from clogging with debris and failing. Any debris that the filters have collected also needs to be cleaned out and disposed of safely. The tubes, pipes and spray jets through which the cleaning fluids circulate need checking, and in automatic parts washers it’s important to check and clean any cogs and casters involved in rotating the cleaning basket inside the machine. If the machine is regularly maintained like this, cleaning can be done with clean rags, abrasive pads, wire brushes and scrapers depending on how stubborn the soiling is. Just don’t try to use the parts washer to clean itself, as this risks flushing debris into the machine and can lead to costly repairs and delays in your business processes.

While they may seem expensive at first, parts washers can save your business significant time and money. The automatic parts washers used by Leonard Helicopters have been shown to save up to 60 minutes on a single cleaning operation, to reduce reported issues with incomplete cleaning by 75%, and to provide energy savings of up to 20%. Even if workspace is limited, a small high-pressure parts washer can clean up to 10 times faster than a standard manual machine.