Hey Guys and Gals,
You all have come to know me as the odd ball who tends to drop in the comment from the fringe or has the nonstandard approach well mapped.
Well today i want to talk about something I find crazy.
So, I am working with a Getinge Pre-vacuum sterilizer. (aka fancy autoclave designed by NASA) This thing is a marvel of modern electronic and pneumatic control system with enough safety feature to boggle the mind. In short one really well engineered and manufactured piece of equipment. As one would expect from the Swedes I guess.
However we have run into a interesting variance in manufacturing process between Europe and The US. I know what a surprise!
In the US we use tapered threads and pipe sealant to secure water and steam lines. This practice usually last for many years of hard service before the materials degrade and need replacing.
The European's take a different approach that I find somewhat befuddling. They use straight threaded fittings and O rings. Nothing is actually tight or secure but simply held in place by the friction of the O rings. So after three years of really heavy use (over 5000 cycles in 36 months) We are having daily leaks of water and steam as these O rings one by one fail. I finally had to contact Getinge direct and talk to them about8t a complete rebuild since I cant have this thing puking water all over the place or leaking steam from an already maxed out system.
This might surprise the crowd here, but this it the first time we have run into this sort of situation. One, as you might remember this is not my trained field so it surprised me. Our facility had been using nothing but Steris gravity sterilizers up until this Getinge arrived so we were not prepared for this and it has been a bit of a challenge to get a handle on because this type of assembly is so foreign to our experience in his facility. Finally we had to contact the maintenance people at our Neibull plant to get the information that yes, this is normal for European units and a complete rebuild was needed because we could not get this info from the US Getinge office.
So, now that I have put all of that out there, have any of you guys or gals run into this situation as well?
Is this really more common than I realize because of my inexperience?
Since we are getting more and more European equipment now and I have to work out prevent-maint programs for them it would help me to know if this is really a standard practice or this was a unique situation that I may not run into gain or often?
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Viva La Difference! Or How They Do Things On The Other Side Of The Pond
Re: Viva La Difference! or how they do things on the other side of the pond.
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