Static Clean Now Cleaner by Working with Polymag Tek

Posted on by Robert Phillips

Power in a Name

What’s in a name? Customer have always considered the name, “Static Clean” to be synonymous with producing products that clean sheets and webs in the Converting Industries. For many years, our company has been manufacturing WebVAC Systems that achieve the cleaning criteria that many customers expect. How clean is clean? The cleaning level or efficiencies that are reached with the Static Clean- WebVAC and similar systems is a 95% success rate in the 25-30 micron range.

Raising the Bar

With multi-laminations, higher cleanliness standards of materials used in notebook, laptop, television screens, finer lines of resolution in printed circuit boards, and the growing medical device packaging market, the bar has been raised. Demands have been placed on suppliers to deliver sheeted or web based paper and plastic materials that contain less debris, or what is now called Foreign Matter (FM).

PolyMag Tek LogoA Higher Standard of Clean

In an effort toward continuous improvement, Static Clean has partnered with Polymag Tek. What’s in a name? Polymag Tek’s original business model was to provide materials and equipment to clean magnetic tape. Does everyone remember magnetic tape? Back around 1928, magnetic tape was invented in Germany to record sound. In the 1950s and 1960s, magnetic tape was widely used by IBM in the storage of computer data, particularly for backups. In the 1990s, the pressure was on to store even more data on mag tape and it meant making sure that the surface of the tape was totally clean. How clean is clean now?

Polymag Tek’s Contact Cleaning rolls and equipment achieved cleaning levels down into 10 microns and below beginning in 1994. For a greater understanding of the technology, please visit their website by the following link to their “Dirt Report”

For information on their full line of hand rollers, web and sheet cleaners, as well as process roll cleaners including the water wash systems, please visit their website at www.polymagtek.com.

 

Swiss Made Movement Is Not a Dance, But a Quality Standard

Posted on by Robert Phillips

Can a gadget get too small?

In the world of micro-electronics and the trend towards miniaturization, I don’t think we can put the Genie back in the bottle. We seem to be driven to pack the maximum amount of goodies into the smallest of spaces. When we use smart phones, and other digital devices we tend to hold them closer to our eyes than we would a book or magazine. The reality, according to a 2011 study by Dr. Mark Rosenfield of the New York School of Optometry, is that when we use these small devices we blink less, causing a natural decrease in tear production, thus we get eye fatigue. Now think of the employees who have to actually assemble these small but sophisticated products or worse yet, watches. They have to keep a keen eye to the task at hand.

What is Swiss Made?

We’ve all seen the special headband-style magnifying glasses that jewelers use. They need to be able look into the tight confines of the watches, with all of their gears and moving parts. High quality watches are synonymous with claiming to have a Swiss Made Movement, but what does that actually mean? There are four rules in being able to claim Swiss Made Movement.

  1. Must be 100% made in Switzerland.
  2. 60% of the overall value of the watch must be from Swiss Made Parts.
  3. The watch movement must be encased in the outer case in Switzerland.
  4. All quality control and inspections have to be done in Switzerland.

In an effort to maintain accurate movement of a Swiss Watch, it is important to make sure that it is free of particles or debris that can get into the wheels and gears. Static Clean offers the Piezonizer compact, lightweight, ANZ-SC3 Pencil Type Ionizer that delivers ionized air into the nooks and crannies to create a quality product while providing relief to the technicians who spend hours in assembly.

 

Call Me Crazy!

Posted on by Robert Phillips

How many ways can you call someone crazy?   “What are you nuts, kooky, mad, silly, wacky, ape, psycho, bonkers, cracked, delirious, berserk, daft, demented or deranged and I really like fruity and out to lunch”?    While the Oxford Dictionary describes it as a noun meaning: Mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way, we really don’t have the same intent when using crazy in conversation with friends and family.

The opposite to crazy is, calm, collected, rational, responsible, realistic, reasonable, sound and balanced. Can we be honest and agree that most of the time we are somewhere in the middle between these two extremes.   Nobody can be totally calm, always rational, completely realistic, always responsible or perfectly balanced, but a happy medium makes life more interesting.   Wouldn’t you agree?

When it comes to ionization, especially in electronics manufacturing, the goal is towards perfectly balanced static eliminators. There is no room for an ionizer to be out of balance or to produce more positive than negative ions. Such a state of imbalance can cause early failure of electronics boards or assemblies or create a situation called “walking wounded”.   This simply means that harm has been done in the form of static electricity discharge (esd) to the device that may cause a latent product failure.   It could be a TV, stereo or any electronics widget that uses sensitive electronics components in it design that is impacted by the esd event. Many Static Clean ionizers such as our Sentinel Blower meet or exceeds the ESD standard for balance.

In life it is also good to strike a happy balance. Call me crazy, but then again aren’t we all?