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Brighton Science Blog
Topic: Cleaning Processes

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3 minute read

4 Common Factors that Impact Conformal Coating Adhesion

The widespread use of electronics in all manufacturing sectors has presented distinct difficulties. Manufacturers are responsible for safeguarding these electronic devices in harsh conditions that render electronics susceptible to even the slightest traces of moisture, particles, and environmental ...

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4 minute read

The Water Break Test as a Surface Measurement Gauge

The water break test is a common way for manufacturers to test the surface cleanliness of metal surfaces. Compared to other legacy cleanliness tests, it is relatively simple to perform. However, the results rely almost entirely on the subjective eye of the person performing the test. Hydrophobic...

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1 minute read

Surface Inspection 101: A Visual Guide to the Surface Analyst, Water Break Tests, and Dyne Ink

In the manufacturing industry, it is crucial to meet certain surface preparation requirements in order to ensure the safety and reliability of products. Various tests have been developed to determine if these requirements are being met and if the cleaning process has been effective enough to...

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4 minute read

Demystifying Dyne Levels: A Comprehensive Guide

The evaluation of material surfaces in terms of quality has long relied on dyne testing. Despite their drawbacks, such as subjectivity, imprecision, damage to surfaces, and safety risks for users, dyne tests have remained popular among manufacturers due to their wide availability and affordability....

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4 minute read

Discover the Top Alternative to Dyne Testing That Gets Results

Dyne solutions have been the most common method of quality-checking material surface cleanliness for decades. Their ubiquity and low cost have led them to be heavily relied upon by manufacturers even though they are imprecise, destructive to surfaces, and harmful to the user. The science behind...

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1 minute read

Guess the Contact Angle: IPA Wiped Composite Material

This 'Guess the Contact Angle' video is the first of our next series of videos focusing on how contact angle changes when a composite surface is cleaned or treated in various ways. The contact angle featured in this demo is formed by a water droplet deposited using the handheld Surface Analyst on...

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3 minute read

The Best Way to Qualify a Wash Method for Your Manufacturing Process

Parts washers  are heavy-duty, hardworking machines that have become irreplaceable staples in automotive andmachined part manufacturing processes. As manufacturing processes have become more sophisticated, the industries using parts washers have expanded to includenot only industrial metals and...

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3 minute read

Why You Should Implement a Surface Cleanliness Specification Using Contact Angle

When cleaning invisible contaminants from a surface, you may ask yourself, "How do I know when the surface is clean, or how clean, is clean enough?" These are common questions that product development teams ask when developing new products that require surfaces to be thoroughly cleaned in order to...

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1 minute read

Surface Analyst Diagnoses Critical Cleaning Issue of Defense Weaponry Components

Brighton Science's Surface Analyst was featured in a Finishing & Coating article where Hubbard-Hall used the handheld technology to diagnose a $1 million dollar problem for a manufacturer that extrudes aluminum tubes as part of two individual missile systems: an armor piercing air to surface...

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1 minute read

Guess the Contact Angle: Plasma Treated Aluminum

So far in our Guess the Contact Angle Series, we have brought you three videos demonstrating how contact angle changes depending on the state of the material surface: Contact angle measurement on a piece of aged, 'as is' aluminum Contact angle measurement on aluminum after cleaning it with an IPA...

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3 minute read

Why Automotive Glass Bonding Recalls Should be a Thing of the Past

Automotive glass is a technological marvel. Despite its clarity, there is a lot that is unseen by the average driver. Silica compounds, tempering, and lamination all combine to create one of the most critical components of today’s motor vehicles. Unfortunately, though, things periodically go wrong...

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1 minute read

Guess the Contact Angle: Abraded Aluminum

So far, in our Guess the Contact Angle Series, we have brought you two videos: the first one shows the Surface Analyst taking a contact angle measurement on a piece of aged, 'as is' aluminum. The second video asks you to guess the contact angle after we took the same piece of aluminum but cleaned...

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1 minute read

Meet Brighton Science's Chief Scientist, Giles Dillingham

A Deep History in Materials Science Founder and Chief Scientist of Brighton Science, Dr. Giles Dillingham's fascination with the connections between the invisible (the molecular structure of the world around us) and the perceivable (the properties and behavior of materials and objects) stems from a...

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1 minute read

Guess the Contact Angle: IPA Wiped Aluminum

As part of the Guess the Contact Angle series, we have brought you a new video that highlights best practices when cleaning material surfaces with IPA wipes and we will ask you to "guess" the contact angle measurement after the surface has been cleaned. The contact angle featured in this demo is...

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1 minute read

Can Contact Angle Quantitatively Measure Total Surface Energy?

In an article published in the Journal of Adhesion Science and Technology, "Water Contact Angle as a Quantitative Measure of Total Polyethylene Surface Energy" Materials Scientists from Brighton Science (formerly BTG Labs) explain the validity of water contact angle as a measurement for total ...

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4 minute read

How Manufacturers Can Optimize the Effectiveness of Plasma Activation

In last week’s blog post, Using Plasma for Surface Cleaning and Activation, Rose Roberts, Ph.D., Brighton Science's (formerly BTG Labs) Senior Custom Applications and Materials Engineer, discussed how to use plasma for the dual purposes of cleaning critical surfaces and activating critical surfaces...

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2 minute read

Using Plasma for Surface Cleaning and Activation

This blog post is the first of a two-part series focusing on plasma. With the help of Rose Roberts, Ph.D., Senior Custom Applications and Materials Engineer, we will review plasma basics and discuss how plasma can be used for both cleaning and surface activation. We will also touch upon the...

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5 minute read

Surface Quality Measurements Enable Plating and Coating Chemistry Suppliers to Guarantee Quality to Their Customers

Automotive supply chains are complex. Nearly 78 million vehicles were manufactured in 2020. Each vehicle may have upwards of 30,000 individual parts. Automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) need to manage billions of parts annually. If any of these parts fail, vehicle performance is...

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3 minute read

Quantifying the Effectiveness of High Volume Metal Cleaning in Fresh and Aged Baths

In today’s video, we will show you how to quantify the surface quality of metals when using fresh and aged baths. We will demonstrate how Water Contact Angle (WCA) measurements can provide feedback in less than two seconds on the effectiveness of your cleaning process and will enable you to improve...

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1 minute read

Guess the Contact Angle: Aged 'as is' Aluminum

In today’s blog post, we are going to have a bit of fun using video to learn more about contact angles. We will show you a contact angle and will ask you to “guess” the contact angle measurement. The contact angle featured in this demo is formed by a water droplet deposited on a piece of ‘as is’...

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6 minute read

Why You Should Rethink Your Manufacturing Cleaning Process

In manufacturing, a final assembly is only as reliable as its constituent parts, the bonding or joining method used to hold them together, or the coating method used for corrosion protection and/or the final aesthetic touch. In order to guarantee the strength and successful performance of a...

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6 minute read

Why Knowing Water Contact Angle is Important for Successful Adhesive Performance

Adhesives are an integral part of modern manufacturing, but choosing the right adhesive is only one part of the equation. It’s well known that you won’t get a reliable bond with an adhesive if you just slap the adhesive onto your material without doing anything to prepare that surface. What ISN’T...

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7 minute read

What are Surfactants and How Do They Impact Surface Tension?

In recent articles, we’ve discussed what surface tension and surface energy are. Manufacturers need to acquaint themselves with these concepts because controlling surface quality through surface energy measurement of solid materials is the most predictive method of ensuring high-performance bonds...

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7 minute read

What is the Difference Between Surface Free Energy and Surface Energy?

When it comes down to it, this is another purely semantic question, much like the one we dealt with in another article comparing the terms “surface tension” and “surface energy.” Surface-free energy is free energy in a particular space - the surfaces of materials. Free energy, in its most...

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7 minute read

How to Measure Surface Tension

The attractive force of the molecules present at the surface of a liquid towards each other is called the surface tension of that liquid. It may seem like a little thing (and in terms of mass, it doesn’t really get much smaller than the top few molecular layers that make up the surface of a liquid...

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7 minute read

What is the Difference Between Surface Tension and Surface Energy

Using adhesives in manufacturing is becoming increasingly common for building everything from massive machines to everyday tech devices. But companies' reliance on the science of adhesion to make sure their products work perfectly and look marvelous didn’t start there. In the centuries since the...

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4 minute read

Surface Energy Measurement is the Key to Process Control and High Performance

When manufacturing companies take adhesion seriously, it can have a remarkable effect on their ability to achieve their business goals. The key is to take a strategic look at adhesion processes early in product development.

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3 minute read

How Surface Sensitive Measurements Help Medical Device Manufacturers Avoid Regulatory Bottlenecks

The pathway to zero defect manufacturing through the implementation of quality control procedures is found right there in the name. Quality control requires the control of variables to ensure quality outcomes. But it’s the former that is beguiling to quality engineers.

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6 minute read

Manufacturing Best Practices for Business Continuity Plans

Even though coming to the end of 2020 has not at all meant the end of the impact of Covid-19, manufacturers are pushing forward to make sure 2021 is not marred by the setbacks of this year. This has not been a normal economic downturn, and the ways to remain resilient in the past are not enough to...

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4 minute read

What Medical Device Manufacturers Need From Surface Cleanliness Testing

Quality tests during medical device production need to check a lot of boxes for manufacturers. Testing must increase confidence in product reliability in order to be worthwhile to manufacturers. What’s more, that confidence needs to be measurable and reportable because companies cannot tolerate...

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4 minute read

How to Get a Stronger Weld Through Cleaning

Even though we look around us and see plastic everywhere, in every shape and imaginable application, metals are still a more commonly used raw material in machined products. Metals are the legacy material of choice due to their strength and relative ease of bonding but advances in polymers are...

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6 minute read

3 Things You Need to Know to Create Strong, Reliable Bonds With Laser Cleaning

Manufacturers are always looking to create stronger, more durable, more reliable, and in the automotive and aerospace sectors, lightweight products. In this pursuit, they’ve often upgraded and swapped out material systems for metal alloys that have a lower density, better temperature tolerance, and...

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7 minute read

Controlling Parts Washing Methods for Medical Components

Cleanliness is next to production standardization requirements for medical device manufacturers (as the old saying goes). Devices built to be inserted within the human body understandably need to meet the highest cleanliness standards. Companies in this industry have already known what many of us...

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7 minute read

Single vs Multi-fluid Contact Angle Techniques Part 1: Surface energy and the attractions between substances

This is part one of a two-part series explaining the finer points of Brighton Science's approach to helping companies build reliability into their cleaning and adhesion processes through consultation and implementation of novel inspection equipment. These two articles are based on this technical...

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7 minute read

Will New Hand Washing Practices Cause Problems for Manufacturing?

Like many industries during the COVID-19 crisis, manufacturing has had to make big changes, including scaling back its workforce, enforcing new and intensified hygiene standards, and taking a closer look at workplace cleanliness. Looking ahead to the permanent adjustments we’re all making, it’s...

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5 minute read

Proposed ASTM Standard Will Ease the Pain of Manufacturers

An exciting development is taking place to make surface quality and cleanliness inspection technology more available to all manufacturers. We have collaborated with ASTM International and other stakeholders to craft a revision to establish a standard use of handheld goniometers in production...

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4 minute read

How to Protect Overmolded Connectors for Medical Devices

Protective coverings are part and parcel of our lives these days. For industries reliant upon electronic components and connectors, protective coverings in the form of polymeric over-molding encapsulation need to remain sealed and impervious to the environment.

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6 minute read

How to Get the Most Out of Your Vacuum Plasma Treatment

Vacuum plasma is the treatment method of record for many manufacturers. Not only because it is a legacy technology proven useful over many, many decades but because it can be particularly effective at creating chemically reactive surfaces of various geometries that need to be bonded, coated,...

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4 minute read

Covid-19: Biological vs. Chemical Contamination in Manufacturing

Lately, the whole world has seen variations of the same conversation. Whether the discussion centers on N95 masks, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, or what movies to watch while maintaining a safe social distance, the underlying concern is about cleanliness.

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7 minute read

Cleaning Strategies for Great Adhesion

Cleanliness in manufacturing gains avid devotees all the time. Once the importance of cleanliness is grasped, it’s nearly impossible to think about manufacturing processes without considering the pervasive impact cleanliness has on every aspect and feature of the process.

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3 minute read

Plasma Treatment for Complete and Reliable Cleaning with Richard Burke

At IPC APEX 2020 in San Diego, we wanted to explore the ways that electronics manufacturers, who encapsulate their circuit boards with a conformal coating, are cleaning their boards. What are the benefits to their current processes, and what are some things manufacturers could learn to make their...

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2 minute read

History of Cleaning for Ideal Electronics Manufacturing with Mike Konrad

At IPC APEX 2020 in San Diego, we got the chance to sit down and chat with Mike Konrad from Aqueous Technologies and the Reliability Matters podcast, a show about the reliability of circuit assemblies.

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4 minute read

Topcoat to Primer Surface Reliability for Aircraft Painting

Adhesion problems don’t have a preference when it comes to the kind of damage they cause. Whether the end result is structural or cosmetic, adhesion-related failure headaches for manufacturers abound. For aircraft OEMs, one of the most crucial aesthetic operations is the topcoat of paint, although...

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5 minute read

Surface Quality in Aircraft Sealing and Bonding for Repairs

When an aircraft is manufactured, every single portion of the plane or jet is designed to be able to be serviced and repaired for the next 20-30 years. Aircraft manufacturing OEMs are building aircraft with the expectation that extensive repairs will have to be done later down the road. This is an...

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5 minute read

Why Surface Cleanliness is Crucial for Electronic PCBs

Defining “clean” is actually more complicated than it sounds. Cleanliness can be in the eye of the beholder (I mean, we all had a college roommate who swore they were tidy, but let’s be honest…), and it can also be calculated and precisely managed to the nth degree. In regard to PCB cleanliness for

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6 minute read

Is Roughness as Important as Surface Cleanliness to Adhesion?

When the subject of material surfaces comes up among manufacturing engineers, the discussion usually centers on the physical attributes of that surface, the surface topography or morphology, or more simply - the surface roughness. Preparing material surfaces for assembly, coating, painting, or...

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5 minute read

Best-practice Surface Preparation Processes for New Products

New Product Development is an essential component to the successful growth of companies that always challenge themselves to improve and innovate. Getting this design stage right is pivotal in that it sets in motion everything the product will be and how well it will perform.

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4 minute read

How to Ensure a Manufacturing Surface is Clean Enough for Adhesion

Cleanliness and adhesion go hand-in-hand. If you’re looking for an adhesion process to be successful, then you are also absolutely interested in cleaning the materials involved in the application. In order to get the most out of your cleaning operations, it’s imperative to know three things: What...

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4 minute read

Can a Surface Science Lab Ensure Adhesion in Manufacturing?

Manufacturers utilize research and design laboratories all the time. To scale new products up to the production line, years of toiling in testing labs are done to ensure that everything goes off without a hitch once production starts.

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4 minute read

How to Fix Common Causes of Adhesion Problems

Manufacturers often have a large blind spot when it comes to the causes of adhesion problems. This blind spot makes it impossible to solve these problems and generates frustration and loss rather than productivity and adhesion success. Taking the blinders off and taking on adhesion failure at its...

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5 minute read

10 Most Common Surface Quality Mistakes by Manufacturers

Manufacturers are constantly fighting against adhesion problems. Surfaces not sticking and adhesives not working is the daily reality facing manufacturers looking to make high-quality, reliable products. The daunting nature of the task of eliminating adhesion failure seems insurmountable and...

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1 minute read

Optimizing your Metal Performance with the Surface Analyst

Manufacturers who work with metal and are concerned with metal performance are all too familiar with the obstacles that come along with coating, painting, bonding, printing, or sealing it. While the uses of metal in manufacturing are countless and exist in numerous industries, the common...

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2 minute read

Brighton Science's Exceptional Lab: Experts in Advanced Materials and Processes

Brighton Science Lab Capabilities The history of Brighton Science (formerly BTG Labs) is rooted in adhesion research. Originally a development lab, Brighton Science specialized in plasma polymerized coatings. The engineers worked with coatings containing corrosion-resistant and anti-microbial...

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1 minute read

CMH-17 Composite Materials Handbook: Validating Surface Preparation

Ongoing Advancements in the Field of Composite Materials Brighton Science (formerly BTG Labs) maintains an important connection to CMH-17, the Composite Materials Handbook. Brighton Science's special connection began in 2004 when Giles Dillingham, Founder and Chief Scientist, read that CMH-17...

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1 minute read

Contact Angle Analysis: Sealing Surface of Aluminum Castings

Surface Quality Requirements of Aluminum Castings Automotive manufacturers widely utilize aluminum castings as the most successful way to create aluminum parts. However, this process can involve inorganic contaminants on the surface, which interfere with potential bonding, sealing, or coating....

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2 minute read

Automotive Applications Series: Evaluating Surface Preparation for the Automotive Industry

Automotive manufacturers who bond, seal, coat, paint, or print now have a reliable way to verify the cleanliness of their surfaces.

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3 minute read

Automotive Applications Series: Ensuring Success for Formed-In-Place Gasket (FIPG) Applications

Controlling Surface Condition in FIPG Application Increasingly, FIPG processes are replacing traditional gaskets for a variety of automotive applications, such as air filters, oil filters, door panels, and external engine parts. The advantages include cheaper material cost, higher throughput...

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