TKO-10-DP

Manufacturers of turbine components, castings, and other precision parts use dye penetrants to find any cracks, seams, or porosity in the surfaces of the parts. The penetrant is applied by immersion dip, brush on, or spray. After the parts are inspected, the bulk of the penetrant is removed by immersion in a water rinse tank, similar to the rinse tanks in conventional parts washers. The dye penetrant rinsed off the parts floats to the top of the tank. If the penetrant builds up to cover the surface of the rinse tank, the cleaning process is impaired, and the penetrant on the surface of the tank is subject to biological attack, causing odor and fouling of the rinse water. Without treatment, the rinse tank must be dumped weekly, causing a significant burden in downtime, labor, and waste removal costs.

Although removal of the penetrant from the tank surface appears to be similar to removal of tramp oil from machine tool sumps, conventional tramp oil skimmers cannot be used because the penetrant attacks PVC and many other plastics used in tramp oil removal devices. Keller Products, Inc., manufacturer of the widely used TKO pump/skimmers for tramp oil, was asked to address the problem by a large user of dye penetrants.

After researching the limited acceptable materials of construction, Keller developed the TKO-1 0- DP pump/skimmer specifically for the dye penetrant application. Similar in operation to conventional TKO pump/skimmers, the TKO-1 O-DP pulls the penetrant from the surface of the tank through a floating inlet device using an air-operated pump, separates the penetrant from the rinse water with a proprietary permanent separator element, and returns water continuously to the rinse tank at high flow rate.

Installed in the shop of the dye penetrant user, the TKO-1 O-DP has reduced waste from the dye penetrant area by 75 percent and completely eliminated odor generation and biofouling of the rinse water. The user is now planning to standardize on the TKO-1O-DP for all his dye penetrant lines.