Time To Clean Up

In this article, Dustcontrol highlights problems associated with dust pollution in modern production facilities and illustrates how integrated high vacuum systems can provide competitive advantage. Intense workloads and pressure to produce quality products are
creating demand for cleaner production facilities. However,manufacturing intensity seems to make this need harder than ever.

Airborne dust and particulate waste from manufacturing processes are increasingly nacceptable in facilities trying to achieve efficient working environments. If physical concerns over product quality and environmental health are not enough, external pressures from COSHH and recent ATEX regulations, add to the burden.

While it may seem that air cleaning through large-scale ventilation is a primary option, many businesses could improve their facilities through on-tool extraction.This involves high vacuum systems that transport waste to a centralised location for easy disposal or intermediate pre-separators for potential recycling. Such systems can also be used as general in-house vacuums, negating the need for sweeping (which creates hazardous airborne dust) and mobile vacuums.

 While mobile units work in certain situations, they can fall foul of poor maintenance, may be fitted with unsuitable filtration and can cause trip hazards and manual handling issues.With COSHH stating the primary method of dust removal should be at source,plus the fact that a proper inhouse cleaning schedule could reduce or eliminate requirements for ATEX zoning,it is no wonder that manufacturers are adopting Dustcontrol solutions.Typical industry sectorsinclude: specialised production facilities (SKF and andvik);aircraft manufacturers (EADS Airbus and Lochkeed Martin); automotive manufacturers (Scania); body shop repair firms;wind turbine manufacturers;pharmaceutical companies;
electronics manufacturers and food producers.

Rather than being a capital cost problem, integrated dust extraction systems can help
businesses move forward through reduced health,working practice and quality issues. Clean environments and healthy staff reap benefits from reduced sickness costs to projecting a better profile to customers.
 Dustcontrol
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