Proof of oil in an oil-free system

[tralala]

Hello Everyone!

We have a pneumatic system for the handling of silicon products, which is supposed to be runed ONLY with oil-free compressed air. Our customer is complaining that our gripper is leaving marks in their products, which look very similar to oil stains.

Is there a way to prove if compressed air with oil was used in the system?

How can we prove if a metal surface (aluminium or plastic) is contaminated with oil or grease?

Cheers!
Tra

 

[unclesyd]

Any large lab should be able to tell if the surface is contaminated with oil by either chemical or physical means. It would help if you knew what type of oil that maybe causing the contamination.

Here are some quick tests.
Hold the contaminated part up to a light and rotate it and look for variegated or rainbow images on the surface.

Hold the part up to a UV light and look for glowing.

If the contaminate is a petroleum based material we would use Carbon Tetrachloride extraction and evaporate the CCL4 on a KI crystal for IR analysis.

Different based oil may require a different solvent.

 

[tralala]

Hi!
Thank you very much for the answer. We'll try first with the UV light. Hopefully it'll work. If it doesn't I'll write again asking for more help.
Thanks again.
Trala