Military cleaning applications can vary from gun and weapon cleaning to aircraft and vehicle maintenance overhauls. Parts washing and cleaning applications for the armed forces usually entail not only cleaning the outsides, but also the insides of guns, arms and armament. This often requires the use of a gun cleaning solvent.
Depending on the armament barrel size, barrel length and additional components needing cleaning, immersion-style systems with ultrasonics are an excellent option.
Automated Ultrasonic Wash-Rinse-Dry Military Weapon Cleaning Machine
This ultrasonic gun cleaning system allows for automated wash, rinse, and dry of armament components in a single-chambered unit. The automated system moves fluids from heated storage tanks into a single ultrasonic process tank, rather than moving a basket through a series of tanks.
The ultrasonic gun cleaning tank flushes cleaning solution around and through the parts. Ultrasonics in the system ensure complete, uniform cleaning inside the barrel and other interior gun features. A final hot-air drying step ensures a spot-free finish.
Vapor Degreaser for Military Gun Cleaning
Another excellent option for military gun and weapon cleaning is vapor degreasing. The vapor degreaser gun cleaning tank performs its cleaning without water immersion, thus reducing the possibility of rust formation. Instead the cleaning action takes place using vaporized solvent. The vaporized solvent is especially effective at removing true oils and other petroleum-based fluids from both the interior and exterior of guns and military weapons.
Because the vaporized solvent has a lower surface tension than water, the solvent can reach inside holes and cavities that water cannot, leading to more effective cleaning action. The vapor degreaser gun cleaner also offers the advantage of rapid drying after cleaning.
Vapor Degreasing FAQs
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How does a vapor degreaser work?
If you’ve ever been wearing glasses as you walked into an air-conditioned building on a hot summer day, you already have a good understanding of part of how the vapor degreaser process works. (For those in colder climates, walking outside while wearing glasses on a cold winter day is an even better example.)
So, how does a vapor degreaser work? The vapor degreasing process is a cleaning process that uses solvent vapors (boiled solvent) rather than water to clean parts.
A vapor degreaser has two tanks (sumps) of solvent inside. One vapor degreasing tank boils the solvent (boil sump) which creates a vapor or mist of the solvent. The second sump (ultrasonic sump) is heated but not to the boiling point and is used as the second cleaning stage. The vapor degreaser also has bands of cooling coils inside just above the level of the sumps. These coils cause the vapor to return to a liquid state and fall back into the sump. The effect is like small “clouds” of the solvent are formed between the top of the sumps and the cooling tubes.
As parts at room temperature are lowered through the cooling area into the vapor, the vapor from the boil sump condenses on the parts just like moisture in the air does on your glasses in the examples above. This condensation contains the solvent that dissolves the oils on your parts, and the beading action creates droplets which run across the surfaces of the parts and fall back into the boil sump. The parts are then moved to the ultrasonic sump which contains heated but non-boiling solvent. This allows the parts to be lowered into the sump so that any blind holes or internal features are also thoroughly exposed to the solvent.
Finally parts are raised into the cooling coil area to allow the solvent to quickly dry and and then raised through a second layer of freeboard coils near the very top of the vapor degreaser that insure complete drying and the recapture of the solvent from the parts.
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Is desiccant required in a vapor degreaser?
Desiccants are used to absorb the water found in humid conditions to reduce or eliminate condensation. It can also be added directly to liquids to absorb the water content from the fluid. We are used to seeing the small white bags of desiccant found in packaging for everything from shoes to electronic equipment. Most of this desiccant is silica – typically in gel form. Other common substances used as desiccants are activated charcoal and calcium chloride.
The desiccant used in vapor degreasers is 3 Angstrom Molecular Sieve, small pellets of zeolite clay. Like all desiccants, the zeolite clay adsorbs water from the solvent, and may be reused by baking it dry. Desiccants are most often used in a vapor degreaser if the solvent contains an alcohol. This is often the case with solvents used for defluxing processes on soldered boards and leads. Water found in the separator extracts the alcohol from the solvent and in turn the water and alcohol are absorbed by the zeolite clay. If a degreaser is operated in a very humid environment, a desiccant may be needed to effectively remove the water from the solvent.
No matter what Department of Defense armed forces branch, Best Technology has the proper gun, weapon, artillery, armament and vehicle maintenance/overhaul part cleaning system for the Army, Navy, National Guard, Marines, Air Force, or Coast Guard.
To learn more, contact a military gun cleaning expert at Best Technology.