Titration: Keeping an eye on your pretreatment system
What's the worst that can happen with a powder-coated part you're packaging to send to a customer? The coating peels off. What’s one of the best ways to prevent that from occurring? Monitor and control your pretreatment washer system. This article discusses how to titrate a pretreatment system so that you won't have a lot of explaining to do to customers when you have to rework the parts. The article explains how to maintain chemical concentrations in tanks and gives step-by-step procedures on titrating and descaling. The article also discusses common mistakes made when monitoring a washer system.
Many shops don't realize the importance of the pretreatment system and don't regularly titrate it. These shops also don't log or chart test data for analysis or keep published specifications required by their chemical suppliers. When this happens, the employees who are testing the bath don’t have written specifications to test against or even conduct the test. This lack of specifications means no two (or more) tests may be done the same way. It’s important for testing data to be recorded so that trends can be monitored. This is one way to analyze the system to determine if concentration levels, pH levels, or rinse water total dissolved solids (TDS) are getting out of control. The importance of titrating the system can’t be underestimated. Washer systems need a watchful eye.