Primewave® can be incorporated into new process lines - or retro-fitted
At MACH 2008 leading specialist finishing manufacturer Guyson International introduced their all new flexible Kerry ultrasonic Primewave® generator. With this exciting product Guyson manages to incorporate numerous productivity and performance improvements. These benefits will be available on all larger Guyson ‘Kerry Ultrasonic’ systems with integrated generators as well as in a host of OEM products such as generator and submersible transducer sets, suitable for retrofit into pre and post cleaning tanks or for incorporation into new process lines.
The new Primewave generator has been designed for each of the two boards to produce up to 1000 watts of power when running at full power. They will deliver a real 1000 Watts output and not simply a nominal peak figure. For larger ultrasonic tank systems this equates to fewer generators being required and real savings to be made.
Ultrasonic activity tailored to components being cleaned
Flexibility is one of the core Primewave strengths. The new Kerry generator can operate in a variety of ultrasonic applications, in aqueous, solvent or viscous liquids, and can be tailored by the operator to produce the quality of ultrasonic activity required, as dictated by the component complexity or by the substrate. The Primewave generator has the ability to control precisely the ramp-up of power delivery so it can deliver a surge of power to jump start cavitation in viscous liquids, or it can feed in power incrementally to obviate damage to delicate items such as electronic circuits.
The new Primewave generator is proven to deliver a very robust cavitation. ‘Cavitation’ is where millions of miniscule cleaning bubbles are generated by alternating pressure waves created in the wash solution. These waves create the cavitational bubbles which grow and then implode when at an optimum size, producing an extremely high energy scrubbing action that imparts cleaning. Typically, lower frequencies (e.g. 25 kHz) produce a larger cavitational bubble that delivers more energy and harsher cleaning action, whilst higher frequencies
(e.g. 200 kHz) produce a smaller cavitational bubble which is better for internal cleaning of blind holes or more delicate cleaning for applications such as electronics.
Primewave has the power to perform even with cooler tanks and non-degassed solutions and proves far less susceptible to ‘stalling’ when baskets of components are loaded into the solution. Primewave with its exclusive Primewaving technology is proven in foil tests to deliver superior, and faster, cleaning compared to previous systems.
Single frequency generators produce a uniform band of energy equidistant from the transducers, which are generally bonded to the underside of the tank, producing what is called ‘standing’ wave bands. This uniform wave of energy is caused by the unvarying frequency or ‘note’ created and can prove inefficient at cleaning, Primewaving has the ability to produce more ‘harmony’. It does this partly by increasing the effective width and quantity of the pressure wave bands, so reducing dead zones and hot spots in the tank solutions and producing a more homogenous cleaning action across the entire tank.
Different frequencies for different process stages
Primewave can also be used to power the two separate stages of a two stage cleaning machine, such as the Kerry Microsolve, at different frequencies. Thus stage one could run 38kHz and stage two 70kHz for final cleaning or rinsing.
Hot pluggable boards replaced in minutes
The new generator can be cased in industry standard 19 inch rack mounted electronic enclosures and the individual internal boards are hot pluggable. This allows the generator boards to be removed from the enclosure and a replacement board inserted within minutes. The standard 19 inch rack mounted design also allows the generators to be easily and cost effectively configured in multiples for use in higher power applications.
The new system also features separate matching board PCB components which are directly linked to the specific tank transducers so that new boards can be easily tuned and do not require tricky matching set-up procedures. All of these features lead to a minimal downtime for maintenance and provide mission critical or very remote site applications (such as oil rigs) the ability to easily replace a spare board and maintain production without waiting for service call out visits.
In terms of process control the new unit provides tight regulation of output power from less than 20W to the maximum 1KW from each generator. An easy to read front panel display provides instant at a glance power monitoring, which can also be easily verified by plugging in an external analyser directly into the front mounted socket. Direct feedback can also be provided to a LAN or other manufacturing control software via rear mounted connections.
