In Knol-edge, Harrie Knol shares his knowledge on precision metal. Harrie is Head of Application Engineering at Veco and helps our clients' engineers to shape their projects.
In this video Harrie talks about the advantages of electroforming in the field of filtration.
Transcript below
Today we are going to talk about the advantages of electroforming in the field of filtration. Filtration market is a very big market. It's expected to be around let’s say $7 billion worldwide and Veco is involved in this market quite heavily with all kinds of filtration: liquid / solid, solid / solid, solid / gas, light, sound or whatever you want to filter. Typical fields are of course chemicals, algae, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, food, oil, gas or whatever you are looking for, you can use our electroforming for filtration.
Why electroforming? What we offer is that you get absolute holes. So we don't use -- it's an absolute filtration; it's not a depth filtration, it's an absolute filtration. So if we promise you 60 micron holes, let's say you get 75 to 63 micron holes, a very known hole size for example for the sugar industry. If you want for coffee filtration for example, you get 30 micron holes and we can offer them within +/- 3 and so we can go down to two micron holes, but also, always absolute filters.
Our filters, and here is a typical shape of our filters, it's self releasing. Filtration is done from this side, and that means that you get a self releasing filter, the filter stays clean, it won't clog. And also very important in this industrial market is that you are very cost efficient. It doesn't make a difference if we make 10 holes or if we make millions of holes, we do it all at the same time making the process very cost effective.
We also have some novelties. This is a conventional screen, so this is how normally an electroformed screen looks. We have been able to make a process, anisotropic, that means that the nickel goes only in one direction and you can make a thicker sieve, a stronger sieve, much stronger than our competitors can do. And on the other hand, you can also take it the other way around. If you can take it thicker, the small holes, you can also add more holes to your screen leading to a bigger through push from your screen. Also very important.
Markets we are in this moment, aerospace, sugar, starch, water treatment, coffee, whatever you can imagine, and again, it's an absolute filtration. And if that is important for you, you should consider our electroformed screens.
To learn more about the Electroforming technology and its applications, download the Electroforming Whitepaper here.
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