Aqueous Cleaning for Precision Bearings and Beryllium.

The Aerospace Guidance and Metrology Center located at Newark Air Force Base in the state of Ohio, U.S.A., repairs inertial navigation and guidance equipment for the United States Air Force. The Center repairs thousands of the delicate, sophisticated electromechanical devices each year. The critical tolerances of many of the moving parts and other considerations mandate extensive "precision" cleaning as well as general cleaning during the repair process. Among the parts requiring cleaning are precision instrument bearings and assemblies containing beryllium. The principal solvents used for this cleaning have been 1,1,2-Trichioro 1,2,2-trifluoroethane (CFC-113) and 1,1 ,1-Trichloroethane (MCF). The Center has begun modifying its many cleaning processes to use known alternatives for these solvents. Principal among these alternatives are aqueous processes using biodegradable detergents and deionized water. All of the Center's precision instrument bearing cleaning is now done with an aqueous process. Considerable testing and evaluation are nearing completion which indicate that aqueous processes will be used to precision clean beryllium parts with many improvements over the solvent based methods.