New England Electropolishing (NEE) recently completed the installation of a new electropolishing line. The goal of the project was to increase NEE's existing capacity with a specific focus on new and existing medical customers.
"With 2017 sales up over 25%, we saw an opportunity to add capacity while offering new services such as citric acid passivation," said Luke Almeida, Vice President of Business Development.
Features of the new line include:
Two electropolishing tanks with a programmable rectifier
Citric acid passivation line to ASTM A 967, Citric 3
Nitric acid passivation line to ASTM A 967, Nitric 2
Multi-stage rinsing lines
Two deionized (DI) rinsing lines
Two ultrasonic cleaning tanks
Additional alkaline and pickling pre-cleaning stations.
Process validations (IQ, OQ, PQ) have been planned to ensure that quality standards are maintained.
Solving Unique Challenges
NEE provides electropolishing and passivation services to a number of industries including medical, semiconductor, industrial, firearms and precision machining.
"We pride ourselves on solving electropolishing challenges and exceeding customer expectations," said Almeida. One such example involved an architectural metal fabricator in Pennsylvania that called NEE with a finishing challenge: electropolish over 2,500 large stainless steel shelves in the compressed span of 30 days for Apple Inc.
"When the customer first called, they had already gone to two or three finishers without success. There was a raw material issue, and a metallurgist had recommended electropolishing as a potential fix," said Almeida. "The shelves were 5 feet in length and fabricated from 400 series stainless. They all required nearly .0015 inch material removal, which is a lot for our process."
NEE quickly went to work on samples and developed an acceptable process. "We were uniquely cut out for this application," said Almeida. "Our tank size, chemistry and processing controls allowed us to develop a repeatable process that yielded consistent results."
Once the customer accepted qualifying samples, the focus turned to delivery. NEE quickly organized a second shift to assist with the spike in work, and in four weeks NEE turned around nearly 2,500 shelves while maintaining existing customer deliverables.
For more information contact:
Luke Almeida
New England Electropolishing
220 Shove Street
Fall River, MA 02724
800-672-6616
luke@neelectropolishing.com
www.neelectropolishing.com