Selecting the right tool for the job
by Tom Kucklick, Technical Sales/Applications Specialist, Graymills Corporation
Of course not.
While they would ultimately do the job, clearly that would be incredibly inefficient and a terrible waste of your time. Not to mention that you would look pretty silly!
And as absurd as that may sound - we often receive calls like the one that came in last week where a customer asked, “Hey Tom - I just bought a general purpose washer for my HP Indigo press but the filter just isn’t fine enough. Can you help?”
Not to get too technical here - but expecting the filter on a general purpose parts washer to clean these parts is the filtration-equivalent to a barn door versus a cat door. It’s just not fine enough - as it’s usually offered at around 150 microns whereas our HP Indigo Edition parts washer goes down to 3 microns. That’s because our product was designed with input from HP Indigo experts to operate specifically with HP Imaging Oil to pull the pigment out of the fluid to keep things clean.
And how about pump performance? To get through such a fine filter, you need to push through quite a bit of fluid. The machine that we specified with the assistance of HP can produce 2400 gallons of fluid/hour. And our friend the general purpose? It has a maximum output of around 164 gallons of fluid/hour. It just doesn’t have enough “umph” (yes that’s the technical word) to get the job done.
Long story short: the correct tools always make the job easier!
Our customer ended up returning the GP unit and purchasing an HP Indigo Edition Parts Washer - a product which leverages 80 years of Graymills experience in graphics and parts washing.
So before you waste your time and money and order the wrong tool for the job, give us a call. We’ll help you select the right parts washer for your exact cleaning requirements.
About Tom Kucklick
Tom is our “professional problem solver” at Graymills - the go-to person for any and all technical issues and application questions. He has extensive management, sales engineering, international sales and technical expertise in the fields of industrial capital equipment and OEM mass produced products. Tom also has significant hands-on experience in the sales, design, manufacture, installation, maintenance and operation of industrial manufacturing machinery, integrated manufacturing systems, and the manufacture of metal products. Contact Tom at tkucklick@graymills.com.
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