How Cepem keeps its cookertops spotless

Cepem's recent investment in a Guyson Marr-Line in-line aqueous wash machine has solved a cleanliness problem in the production of stainless steel cookertops

When sheet steel is punched and press formed, invariably a residual film of light oil remains on the surfaces which must be removed.

Complete cleanliness on both sides of stainless steel cookertops with dimensions up to 600 x 600 x 50mm is an essential requirement before quality control and assembly at the Cepem cooker division factory of the French number one and European number four manufacturer of domestic appliances, Brandt.

Cepem's recent investment in a Guyson Marr-Line "in-line" aqueous wash machine has solved the cleanliness problem.

The parts are loaded onto a 600mm wide stainless steel mesh belt conveyor travelling continuously at 0.5 m/min.

The parts pass through the first stage, which is a hot wash enclosure, fitted with jets which mechanically spray the cooker tops with a neutral aqueous detergent solution.

They then travel through an enclosure containing a powerful air knife, which blows hot air to skim the surface leaving the cooker tops clean ready for preparation for inspection and assembly.

To separate the non-soluble oil removed from the parts and to remove fine particulates from the continuously re-circulating aqueous solution both a disk skimmer and a 200-mesh fiIter are fitted.

A particular advantage with Marr-Line machines is compactness.

This two-stage unit has a footprint of only 4.5 m2 and can therefore be easily introduced into a dedicated production line or in de-centralised manufacturing cells.

This avoids the costly delays and excessive build up of work in progress associated with large centralised washing and degreasing departments.

The Marr-Line washer range is based on a pre-engineered modular concept which permits standardised parts and assemblies to be configured to meet individual customer application requirements at low capital cost when compared with completely unique special machines or large general purpose wash systems.

Although a typical requirement is wash, blow-off or dry, other stages such as rinse or extra wash stages are easily accommodated within the design parameters.

The tunnel height of this particular installation is 100mm.

However tunnel heights up to 200mm and above and different conveyor widths, normally between 200 and 800mm, can be specified to accept individual customers component size ranges.

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