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Degreaser reconfiguration

 

I work for an appraisal firm and ran into a situation that I need help on. In appraising four degreasers by a major manufacturer, I was told that each degreaser is custom and specifically made for the degreasing process of the customer. If the machines were offered on the market, a potential end user would have to have the exact degreasing requirements or the machines would have to be reconfigured to meet the new requirements. I know that, without knowing the new requirements, it would be very difficult to determine the cost involved in reconfiguring. The degreasers are alkali/aqueous and one is TCE. My question is this; has anyone been involved with buying a degreaser and reconfiguring? What would be a general guide as the percentage of cost (to the original cost) of reconfiguring?

Thank you.

Terry Paddack
Daley-Hodkin - Melville, New York, USA

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There are two basic issues here and they may be confusing each other.

First, old vapor degreasers must be 'updated' to reduce solvent emissions. They may need 2 rows of cooling coils and have only one; they may need a slower hoisting speed if an overhead hoist comes with the unit; they may need additional baffling or shielding to limit crossdrafts; they may need more heating or cooling capacity if a substantially different solvent will be used. This may possibly be a practical upgrade if the unit is new enough, free enough from corrosion, and built of good materials. If you go to the manufacturers of vapor degreasers, especially the OEM, they can tell you what upgrades are needed for 2002 and what they will cost.

The second issue--and I too have done a number of appraisals of this kind of equipment--is that there will never be a "blue book" price for used metal finishing equipment of this type. It is, as you have been told, custom equipment; and the result of that is that there is no price where a unit is "guaranteed to move". I seriously doubt that anyone will take an aqueous cleaning system and resize it; instead, you wait for a buyer who can use it the size it is. This is why there are used equipment dealers in this industry: they buy old equipment--sometimes for a song or even taking it away for free, and hold on to it for months or years until somebody needs it. These aqueous degreasers may be valuable to someone somewhere today or two years from now, but the best you can do for figuring resale value without actually selling them is to go by statistics because there is no ironclad guarantee that you'll find someone who will pay $50 for them. But on the other hand, if they are in good shape, the right buyer could pay 50 percent of new and you'd both strike a bargain.

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey