Seacole Specialty Chemical Acquires Phyton and S.T. Biologicals

Corrosion is one of the costliest challenges for precision parts manufacturing. Improper humidity, temperature, or process time can create destructive corrosion that can ruin batches of parts. Additionally, improperly treating components before storage or sale can lead to failures in the field.

Corrosion is the result of an electrochemical reaction that oxidizes metal atoms. Many metals used as precision parts materials are susceptible to corrosion, including steel, brass, aluminum, and copper. That’s why inhibiting corrosion is an important consideration for any precision parts cleaning process.

What causes corrosion in the parts cleaning process?

Improper humidity and moisture levels can create an environment where oxidation and corrosion can occur. So can high temperatures and too much or too little time in wash or rinse. Last, some chemical catalysts, such as sulfates and chlorides, can increase the chance that corrosion will occur.

Physical corrosion prevention strategies

Optimal corrosion prevention is a combination of physical improvements to the parts cleaning process and the use of a chemical corrosion inhibitor. Usually, most parts manufacturers should optimize the settings of their humidity chambers to maintain a consistent 90 degrees Fahrenheit and 90 percent humidity. It is common for condensation chambers to be kept between 99 and 100 percent humidity.

To prevent corrosion in the field, manufacturers should package their parts so they stay dry and cool. Some manufacturers include desiccants in their packaging to ensure products stay dry.

Chemical corrosion prevention

Corrosion inhibitors prevent chemical corrosion and can be applied during the wash or rinse cycle (or both). They effectively prevent corrosion on steel, brass, aluminum, and copper. Every inhibitor requires a specific amount of time in contact with parts to be effective.

Inhibitors may be aqueous, oil-in-water emulsions, oils, solvents, or additives in cleaners. Seacole’s experts can recommend several different types of corrosion inhibitors depending on a part’s materials and end application, including:

• 571 Rust Inhibitor: Liquid inhibitor for in-process rust protection and short-term indoor part storage. Use in heated, high-pressure spray cabinets, conveyorized systems, freestanding manual tanks, and immersion-type tanks.
• 573 Rust Inhibitor: Solvent inhibitor for long-term outdoors parts storage. Applies a transparent film to parts for a year of protection.
• 577 Rust Inhibitor: Liquid inhibitor for parts that will be welded, painted, plated, or assembled.
• 585 Water-Displacing Rust Inhibitor: Oil inhibitor that protects parts for long-term indoor storage. Applies a transparent film to parts for up to a year of protection.

Seacole has the expertise and precision parts cleaning experience to help manufacturers optimize their processing equipment and find the ideal chemical corrosion inhibitor for their products. Speak with a Seacole expert today.

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You’ve installed fire extinguishers around your kitchen, keep a clean griddle and oven, and properly train your staff. You’ve got fire prevention under control, right? If you haven’t cleaned your kitchen’s exhaust hood and exhaust system recently, then the answer is no, you don’t. Here’s why.

Restaurant Kitchen Exhaust Systems Harbor Grease and Oil

The savory smells of frying burgers, bacon, and home fries sizzling on your griddle may make your guests hungry. But the smoke coming off your grill also contains fat particles that land in your exhaust system. If you don’t clean your exhaust hood, fans, and ducts regularly, the grease builds up and creates a major fire hazard.

Getting Under the Hood

The only way to eliminate this fire hazard is to prevent it from building up in the first place. Since that won’t likely happen, you’ll want to identify and hire a contractor that specializes in restaurant vent and hood cleaning. In many larger cities, there may be several contractors who are known for these specialized services. You can also consult with restaurant equipment sales & leasing companies for their recommendations.

Many municipalities require restaurants to comply with various standards when cleaning their kitchen exhaust systems. The National Fire Protection Association Standard 96 provides minimum standards and best practices for cleaning restaurant exhaust systems. The International Kitchen Exhaust Cleaners Association is a great resource, too. However, always check with your local regulations. For example, the city of Minneapolis requires a restaurant to obtain a permit prior to conducting hood and vent cleaning. Service and required follow-up inspections must be documented. If there were to be a fire, this documentation could prove that the restaurant was compliant in their maintenance program, protecting the restaurant from costly fines or legal action.

The NFPA recommends commercial kitchens clean their exhaust systems quarterly or monthly. Church kitchens, day camps, and senior centers that provide low-volume service may be able to get away with cleaning their exhaust systems just once or twice a year.

Seacole Products for Restaurant Hood Cleaning

Seacole has the following recommendations for commercial kitchen cleaners who secure contracts to keep restaurant hoods grease-free. 744-Hood and Vent Cleaner is ideal for stainless steel hoods, vents, and general equipment. 748-Gel Cleaner is another great product that attacks organic food grease. It’s very effective on heavy food grease, such as caramelized sugars. 748’s thicker formula is made to cling to the vertical surfaces of vent hoods and mushroom vents, and oven/rotisserie walls and ceilings.

Once your vents and hoods are sparkling, your contractor can finish the job with Seacole’s stainless steel polish to make all surfaces gleam like brand new. We also offer PFC2, a concentrated powdered floor cleaner that is the next generation of floor cleaners. This solution to your floor cleaning problems can be used from the kitchen, to restrooms, entryways, and even concrete surfaces of the restaurants’ parking lot or drive-thru lane (not recommended for tar or asphalt).

Don’t let a major fire hazard put your commercial kitchen at risk. Regular degreasing and cleaning can keep grime under control and keep your kitchen safe. For help selecting the right products for your restaurant cleaning challenges, contact Seacole today.

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Earlier this month, we shared how titration testing often solves poor-quality parts cleaning. But sometimes, parts cleaning operations continue to produce poor work even after you’ve recalibrated the concentration of your detergent. You’ve checked concentration and are running your bath hotter and longer and your parts still aren’t clean. What’s your next step?

In our experience, if you’ve accounted for concentration, temperature, and time and you’re confident your equipment is in working order, it’s time to see if ancillary chemistries may help improve your parts cleaning process. Bath additives can help you tackle three remaining issues that may be producing poor-quality work: tough soils, synthetic greases and oils, and environmental conditions.

Removing Tough Soils

Parts such as locomotive engine heads and engine blocks produce tough soils. These parts run so hot that paint and soils are baked on. You can remove excess or heavy carbon-based soils with a quality surfactant. Spraydet Turbo Charge is non-VOC and can remove carbon deposits, mill oils, heavy greases and lubricants, and other tough soils. While it’s tough on grime, Turbo Charge will not damage the base metal of your parts or leave a residue behind.

Reducing Foam and Bubbles

The formation of bubbles is usually associated with cleaning. But adding complex detergents to a washer before it reaches the correct operating temperature can lead to excessive foaming and even washer overflows. Defoamers are designed to work with all sorts of different types of soils, including synthetic lubricants. One of our favorites is Defoamer O, a highly concentrated, non-silicone defoamer. It works well in systems that have excess foaming or a buildup of soils.

Accounting for Environmental Conditions

Adverse environmental conditions or delays in the processing of parts following the cleaning step can lead to the formation of flash rust and corrosion on your parts. Add a corrosion inhibitor to your bath to prevent rust forming on your parts. 571 Rust Inhibitor works well for short-term corrosion resistance, while 577 Rust Inhibitor is ideal for long-term applications.

Lastly, consider the environmental conditions within your parts cleaning equipment. Is foam, scale build-up and grime gunking up your process? Clean-out chemistries clean out your actual parts washer. Over time, wash equipment can build up layers of scale from hard water, excess detergent and soils, and start to rust. Customers often see build up and corrosion in the nooks and crannies of their equipment. Running a non-acid wash like Spraydet 131 through the equipment periodically helps strip these contaminants and help maintain the efficiencies and appearance of your equipment.

If adjusting detergent concentration, temperature, and time is not improving the quality of your parts cleaning operation, it’s time to consider ancillary chemistries. Seacole’s technical department and sales team works with you to create a custom solution for your specific soils and process. Contact the Seacole team today for expert help.

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If you’re a professional cleaning contractor, the best time to add new customers is right around the corner. Here are a few ways spring cleaning can help you add extra value for your customers—and revenue for your business!

1. Blast away parking lot grease and grime.

Commercial property owners want their properties to shine, too. Many reserve capital improvements for the warmer spring and summer months.

The exteriors of commercial businesses can benefit from a general pressure wash of its walls, driveways, and walkways. Pressure washing removes grime, grease, and hard water stains. It also prepares these surfaces for a fresh coat of paint or sealing. Sometimes, pressure washing can even replace the need to paint or resurface. Degreasers cut through grease and oil deposits from concrete drive-through lanes, parking lots, and gas station pump areas.

2. Offer to deep clean decks and patios.

What happens to deck and patio surfaces after several months of being buried under rotting leaves, snow, and ice?

At the very least, they look aged well beyond their years. But more often, the grime and gunk presents a major slip-and-fall hazard. Rotting leaves and melting snow and ice can make decks and patios very slippery. Hard water stains and organic soils can erode concrete and natural stone surfaces.

A proper cleaning removes the risk of slip-and-fall accidents. But it also protects deck and patio surfaces against rot and the growth of mold and algae. Pressure washing these areas will make any deck or patio look like new and extend its life. With the right equipment and products, you can serve several customers a day, adding to your list of loyal customers.

3. Scrub grills and BBQs.

Do your deck and patio customers have outdoor kitchens or at least a gas or charcoal grill? Spring is the perfect time to help them get their equipment ready for the grilling season.

Clean grill grates ensure food will taste great and protect cooks from greasy flare-up grill fires. Degreasers tackle tough grill and oven grease to make your customers’ grills shine and prepare them for a season of cook-outs.

Spring’s just around the corner. Seacole can help you get ready for a busy cleaning season. Contact us today to stock up on the industrial cleaning products you need.

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With decades of experience helping manufacturers find solutions to their industrial cleaning challenges, the Seacole team has seen it all. Just in time for Halloween, here are the five scariest industrial cleaning mistakes we see manufacturers make.

1. Leaving spills on the floor.

Not cleaning up spills right away is a common mistake we see manufacturers make. It’s tempting to let a spill sit while you finish up production for the shift or the day. But spills can be hazardous for your team and your facility. Slip and fall accidents are huge liabilities for manufacturers. Slipping on spilled oil, paint, or lubricant can put an employee out of work for weeks. Instead of being productive on your assembly line, they’re healing at home.

If not resolved quickly, spills of certain chemicals can be hazardous to your facility and the environment. If your process requires flammable, corrosive, or other hazardous chemicals, leaving these materials on the floor can cause damage to your equipment, affect air quality, or even cause a serious environmental accident.

2. Not drafting a disaster/emergency plan.

Speaking of environmental accidents, we’ve discovered many manufacturers fail to properly plan for a disaster or other emergency. What are the risks your facility and team face in the event of a fire, explosion, flooding, or structural damage? These incidents can expose flammable and other hazardous chemicals, causing a chain reaction. Is your team prepared to respond to such an event? A disaster/emergency plan helps your team spring into action and mitigates risk.

3. Improperly storing industrial cleaners.

The storage requirements for your industrial cleaners varies from product to product. Some can tolerate extreme temperatures; others cannot. Some chemicals shouldn’t be stored near each other because combining them could cause an adverse chemical reaction. Is your storage room neat and organized? Are your various products and their storage and usage requirements documented? If not, we encourage you to invest some time into properly storing your industrial cleaners.

4. Not training your staff.

Not training your staff on the safe and effective use of your industrial cleaning chemicals is very risky. Without training in the safe and proper use and storage of chemicals, your team is more likely to hurt themselves, their coworkers, and even your equipment. If you’re having trouble finding the time to properly train your staff, the Seacole experts can help.

5. Investing in unneeded, expensive new equipment.

Sometimes, we discover a manufacturer has invested in expensive equipment to solve an industrial cleaning challenge. Often, there’s a chemical solution that costs a fraction of what they spent on new sprayers, tanks, and other equipment. If you’re considering investing in new equipment to solve a cleaning challenge, call Seacole first. Chances are that we can source or formulate a chemical solution that’s highly effective and affordable.

Are you making any of these industrial cleaning mistakes? Contact the Seacole team today for help.

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The boating season may be winding down, your boat cleaning company’s busy season is just getting started. Without the right tools, cleaning your clients’ boats can cost you thousands in extra labor and time. Here are four boat cleaning products for getting your clients’ boats ready for winter storage that will save you time and labor and increase your profit margins:

1. 99BH Boat Hull Cleaner removes water scale, slime, and algae all at once.

Water scale, slime, and algae are some of the most time-consuming contaminants to remove from boat hulls, especially when they’ve stained the fiberglass. There are plenty of boat cleaning products that can remove one of these contaminants, but they are not all-in-one solutions. And often, they are not safe for fish and other aquatic life.

A product that can safely remove scale, slime, and algae in a single application can cut down on the time it takes your staff to scrub a single boat hull so you can clean more boats in less time. Our favorite is 99BH Boat Hull Cleaner. Simply spray the exterior of your boat down, let the solution penetrate, scrub, and rinse away. It’s safe for the environment and super concentrated so a single pail can clean hundreds of boat hulls.

2. BREAK spray is effective and safe for use on all interior surfaces.

Boat interiors can be very complicated—and time-consuming—to clean. They have multiple finishes that usually require separate cleaning products, from vinyl seats and plastic dashboards to teak decks and Plexiglass windshields. That’s why cleaning boat interiors often slows your production way down.

But with the right product, you can clean all of these finishes with a single chemical, cutting down on the time and materials it takes to clean a single boat’s interior. For interior grime, dirt, and even stained surfaces, we recommend Break, a degreaser and cleaner that comes in a handy spray bottle. Its powerful formula works hard so your staff spends less time scrubbing. Plus, it’s water-based, so it’s safe for your staff and the environment.

3. Bill’s Bug Blaster blasts bugs from the windshields of speedboats and other craft.

It seems like no matter how hard they scrub, your staff has trouble removing those bug carcasses from boat hulls and windshields. All-purpose cleaners, degreasers, and soaps just don’t cut it for bugs, even when there’s an extra dose of elbow grease.

Instead, use a product developed specifically for blasting those bugs. Our favorite is Bill’s Bug Blaster, which doesn’t require any elbow grease (except in extreme cases) and is safe on Plexiglass and glass. Simply spray, let sit for a few minutes, rinse, and wipe dry. A word for the wise: don’t let Bill’s Bug Blaster dry on actual glass, since it can cause a film to form.

4. Fresh Again removes mildew smells.

Mildew smell is one of the hardest things to get rid of when you’re winterizing boats. It seems like it doesn’t matter how hard you scrub, vacuum, or steam clean—the odor remains. Usually, it’s because mildew remains hidden in hard-to-reach places, including live wells.

With Fresh Again odor eliminator, all you need to do is spray and let the product fully dry. As it dries, the chemicals in the product react with the mold and mildew, eliminating the mildew odor. It’s safe for both hard and soft surfaces. You can even add it to your carpet cleaning solution to clean and erase odors in a single application.

Choosing the right cleaning products for the right jobs can help you clean more boats in less time and with less elbow grease. When you choose the right chemicals, they work harder so you don’t have to. To learn more about the different products that can make your boat winterizing operation more efficient and profitable, contact Seacole today.

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Source: PTMS

With a speaker lineup that featured the “Who’s Who” in the products finishing world, valuable industry training, and a well-organized expo of supplier booths, it’s no wonder one of Seacole’s business development managers Paula Anderson wishes the Parts Cleaning Expo had been around when she started in the manufacturing industry. Paula was recently featured in an article on the expo in Products Finishing magazine.

“The classes were the right blend of general information and specific topics tailored to the different groups of people in attendance, such as equipment OEMs, end users of that equipment and vendors to the industry,” Paula says. “It was some of the best trade show-related seminars I’ve attended.”

Valuable Industry Training

Industry training at the Parts Cleaning Expo included two-day technical sessions that dug deep into industrial cleaning processes. These sessions approached industrial cleaning from all perspectives and gave attendees the chance to share their challenges and use the knowledge of the group to uncover new solutions.

Other training focused on new regulations and requirements for industrial cleaning and inspection processes. Training sessions served both the aqueous and solvent cleaning markets, which separates the Parts Cleaning Expo from other similar events.

Innovative Parts Cleaning Pavilion

Paula and other expo attendees were impressed with the range of innovative technologies on display at the expo, especially at the Parts Cleaning Pavilion. Suppliers of cleaning equipment, chemicals, machine tool builders, and software vendors were all present to answer attendee questions, no matter how specific.

The Parts Cleaning Expo is part of the Precision Machining Technology Show (PTMS) that takes place every two years in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s the only show in North America that serves the precision machining industry. It’s our chance to get the latest updates for the industry, meet vendors and suppliers, and hear from industry leaders.

Mark your own calendars for the next PTMS and Parts Cleaning Expo, April 2–4, 2019, in Cleveland, Ohio. We’re excited to see you there! In the meantime, contact Seacole with your industrial cleaning needs and read all about the expo on the Products Finishing website.

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You’re cruising down the freeway when suddenly—SPLAT!—a bug the size of Rhode Island hits your windshield. Bugs on your windshield, grill, and other parts of your vehicle are a part of life during the summer, but they can do major damage to your vehicle’s exterior surfaces. Here’s why bugs are so difficult to remove and a product that can take the pain out of bug removal.

The Juicy Truth about Sticky Bugs

There are a few reasons bugs are so difficult to remove from your vehicle’s exterior, even when you run it through the car wash a few times or apply ample elbow grease. Hitting bugs at highway speeds implants them into your vehicle’s exterior. The hot summer sun essentially bakes bugs onto your vehicle, whether you’re on the road or your vehicle is sitting in parking lot all day.

As bugs decompose, they produce acidic enzymes that do major damage to the paint on your vehicle’s exterior. When you go to remove the bugs at this stage, it can be difficult to remove bug carcasses without removing a bit of paint, too. If you’re successful at removing the bugs while leaving the paint intact, chances are the carcass has discolored the paint.

Bill’s Bug Blaster Gets the Job Done

Bug carcasses are impervious to car wash detergents or windshield sprays because those products aren’t formulated to dissolve the acidic enzymes decomposing bugs produce. To remove hardened on bugs, bird droppings, tree sap, and even road tar, you need a spray that’s formulated to break these substances down before you wash your vehicle or wipe down your windshield.

Bill’s Bug Blaster is designed to attack, break down, and soften the proteins in bugs and bird droppings. It’s safe and effective for use on any vehicle that reaches high speeds or sits out in the sun, from commuter cars and motorcycles to RVs and airplanes.

Simply spray Bill’s Bug Blaster on affected areas and let sit for a few minutes before washing your vehicle as usual. It does a great job of removing or loosening bugs and other sticky dirt so it can be washed away, even bugs and other grime that’s been baked on over days in the sun.

Since Bill’s Bug Blaster is not oil-based, it is safe for use on glass and Plexiglas windshields and won’t leave behind a streaky residue. Just remember to rinse it off before it dries or you give your car a wash. Bill’s Bug Blaster won’t damage your vehicle’s paint or chrome or dull its finish.

Let this summer be the first one where your vehicle doesn’t become a bug graveyard. Contact Seacole to order your bottle of Bill’s Bug Blaster today.

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