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3 April 2013

Purex Solve Laser Fume Issue for Avon

Purex International Ltd has just installed seven of their Alpha - laser fume extractors onto coding lasers at the Avon manufacturing plant in the Philippines.

Rotherham based Purex International Ltd manufacture a wide range of equipment to extract hazardous fumes and dust from varied applications such as hand and reflow/wave soldering, laser coding & engraving, printing, welding and many others.

Avon is one of the world’s largest direct sellers and is a leading beauty company with more than $11 billion in annual revenue. Its product line includes beauty, fashion and home products, with such well-recognized brand names as Avon Color, ANEW, Skin-So-Soft, Advance Techniques and Avon Naturals.

Avon's manufacturing facility in the Philippines was to install several coding lasers to mark plastic containers with 3 lines of alphanumeric characters but Avon identified several issues with the fumes that would be generated from the laser process.

Laser coders actually burn and melt a material when they make a mark producing a fume. These fumes often generate unpleasant odours and can be hazardous to people if they inhale them, they are a health and safety issue and so must be controlled. The fumes can also cause unwanted problems with production.

The laser beam itself can be affected as it passes through the fumes resulting in poor quality codes on the product. This usually means that the product would have to be scrapped.
The laser lens and any sensors can also be damaged by the often hot particles in the fume, if damaged, lenses and sensors can be expensive to replace.

Laser fume also contains particulates (or dust) which settle onto surrounding surfaces which means downtime is usually required for cleaning and maintenance.

To prevent these problems a suitable fume extraction system is essential for the laser.
Raul Tortola - Production Supervisor at Avon explains why they chose a Purex system, "Avon chose a Purex recirculating filter system rather than venting outside because they are easy to install and Avon had no existing exhaust ventilation. The Purex units can also simply be moved if we needed to move the laser lines. Other key reasons why Avon chose Purex and their distributor - Lantec Resources was that we saw Purex units were very economical and technical support and after sales service from both Purex and Lantec was excellent."

"With the delivery of the Purex fume extractors, Avon can now comply now with Environmental Standard Certification. The installation was very quick and simple and we liked the stainless steel construction of the machines as well as the low noise levels and extraction performance. The filtration levels are also excellent at 99.997% of all particulates down to 0.3 micron and the filtration of gases from the marking process using an activated carbon filter."

Saving money and operator safety and happiness were also key for Avon as Raul explains, "Overall we have saved money by not having to install a costly vent to atmosphere system and our operators are happy as they know their workplace and health is protected by the Purex Alpha 400's"


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