SURAHMIN BUSINESS

Has the squeeze on budget for healthcare estates meant that servicing of vital medical gas plant is being ignored?

Medical Air and Medical Vacuum plant are critical items of equipment in any hospital, as they provide vital medicinal gas to hospital patients. These gases are the responsibility of the chief pharmacist, but are looked after by the estates and facilities departments in most acute hospitals. The medical gas “bible” – HTM 02-01 leaves the servicing of this plant to be dealt with “under the manufacturers’ recommendations.” This effectively means that plant doesn’t get serviced when it should. Other recommendations within the HTM 02-01 are being adhered to by most if not all healthcare estates, not just in this country but in many other countries throughout the world.

So why it is that Medical Plant Servicing has become the poor relation when it comes to maintaining standards?

When a quarterly Planned Preventative Maintenance report is presented to the Estates Manager or Medical Gas AP, it is very easy for the AP to request a quotation for the servicing and then ignore the quote. If a PPM engineer reports that plant requires a service, then it should be incumbent upon the Manager to act on the report, rather than let the servicing slide. Some plant in acute hospitals hasn’t been serviced since it was installed. Some Estates Managers just leave the plant until it breaks down. The attitude being that they have an on-call servicing company, contracted to them for 24/7 call-outs, so they don’t need to budget for servicing – just pay for expensive call-outs. If these managers had allocated budget for each piece of medical gas plant, they would not need to pay for so many expensive call-outs.

Keeping costs down in looking after medical gases is of course a priority for acute hospital estates departments; but their blinkered thinking has been caused by financial constraints put on them by financial managers, who do not understand the cost of not forward planning on a practical level for medical plant servicing.

It has been noted that some medical gas APs have no cap on their emergency call-out spend – presumably because of its unpredictable nature, yet have a cap on maintaining expensive and life-preserving equipment, whose budget falls in a different box.

Drum dispensing equipment assists in the transferrable of liquids that may be harmful or dangerous when coming into contact with members of the workforce. Human skin is very sensitive to chemical substances, and the result of such a contact can result in serious bodily harm or the subsequent death of the individual due to complications from numerous industrial liquids and substances commonly found in the modern workplace environment. In order to minimize the risks associated with transferring dangerous, toxic or chemical liquid substances, drum dispensing equipment is commonly employed by both large and small businesses alike to alleviate these concerns, providing a safe method in which to transfer the liquid. Drum dispensing equipment enables businesses to become proactive in providing a safe and productive workplace for employees, while at the same time, complying with the strict health and safety regulations which apply to workplace practices for all companies.

Drum dispensing equipment ensures that the act of dispensing or transferring liquids is as simple as possible. Industry leading manufacturers of drum pumps and other dispensing equipment, through the use of superior construction materials and processes, enable any individual to confidently and safely transfer numerous types of fluids. Superior design and construction principles allows for all strong acids and alkalis, as well as chemicals and toxic liquid substances to be transferred. The performance of the transfer of liquids relies on the strong and proper design of the drum pump itself; premium parts deliver a higher performance pump and allow for effective liquid transfer at low temperatures, while providing a pressure free pump.

One of the primary concerns of drum dispensing equipment is reliability. Experiencing workplace and productivity downtimes due to equipment failure leads to loss in business performance and profitability. Therefore, it is essential that the employed drum dispensing equipment can be constantly relied upon to provide a strong, effective and high performance solution to transfer the liquids. Furthermore, the amount of wastage is receiving further attention, as any wastage in the productive capacities of a business affects bottom line profit levels. Utilizing a series of valves, leading hand operated drum dispensing equipment can dispense small and controlled amounts of fluid. Those pumps that have the ability to dispense liquid in small amounts allow the user to have greater control at all times, while minimizing any chance of spillage that could harm that individual, and also alleviate the possibility of expensive wastage of such materials.

Since carbon fiber tubes recently receive popularity and acceptance as the best material to use compared to steels and aluminum, it is deemed appropriate then to impart some simple ways on how to effectively use this product with the intention of utilizing these to its fullest. One of the many complicated areas in which carbon fiber tubes should be dealt with responsibly is how it can be bonded. This is somehow very intricate that is why most people prefer to have it done by professionals. But you may be surprised to learn that bonding this material is not at all considered as probably the most hair loss-inducing moment of your life. In fact, there are easy steps to follow to accurately bond carbon fiber tubes.

Before you hit your work station, it is important to consider the tools needed, especially the adhesive. Make sure that it does not compromise or affect in anyway the temperature range of the application; chemical or even weather exposure. A room temperature curing maybe deemed safe to use.

First step is to determine the exact measurements of the carbon fiber tubes to be trimmed and bonded. After the tubes were cut into the desired lengths and sizes, the insides of the tubes should be prepped first. This will allow the tubes not to stick to the mandrel while on the process of bonding. One way to do this is by sanding the inner part of the tube until the surface becomes smooth. Take note that applying too much pressure while sanding may inflict some scratches to the carbon fibers that may result into weakening of the entire tube. Try abrading with one stroke only. Once you produce black sanding dusts, then you are ready to clean the surface of the carbon fiber tubes.

Your tubes should now be ready for the so-called water break test. This will ensure if there are no release chemical remains from the insides. If there are beading resulted from the test, then the tubes are still not free from the chemicals, hence, should repeat the procedure until the inner side is already chemical contamination-free. All parts of the tubes should be completely dry before taking the next step which in the degreasing part. Here, you need a significant amount of acetone applied in a cotton or paper towel. Degrease all parts of the tubes until all black dust cease to exist.

Like yin and yang, one cannot function well without the other. If you can not make friends with the first one, you cannot make friends with the other. That is how composite materials work. But once these materials joined their unparalleled qualities, it is a brand new sybaritic delight! We always come across these words – composite materials. But have we really thought of what these materials really are, what are their uses, and what’s in store for us when we use them? This article will walk you through about the basics of this product.

By the word itself, these materials are made of two or more different materials combined together. However, they do not form an entirely new discovery. They still manage to maintain their own identities and how they complement each other. One factoid on this matter is that we may not be aware of it, but these essential substances are often, used from generation to generation. These are often reinvented to bring out the best from these ingenious things. A simple example of this is concrete. It is made of cement and gravel. Cement’s quality as a binding product works best when aided by gravel that plays as the back bone, or the reinforcement. In this case, composite materials usually have two constituents – a binder and reinforcement. Whereas binder, commonly called the matrix, helps in protecting the back bone, or the reinforcement; the reinforcement, on the other hand, holds together what the binder sets its place. In this regard, both materials efficiently work its synergy to the fullest.

These materials become a part of our every day lives. In fact, we may only be slightly aware of it, but as we use our bath rooms, we see our bath tubs and shower stalls made of fiber glass; or even counter tops and sinks made of marble.

These composites found its way to be popular when new inventions with high performances rely on their qualities as being light weight, yet durable and strong to stand the test of heavy loads. This has been proven true when manufacturing parts and accessories of air planes, space shuttles, and racing cars. Recently, these products are in soaring popularity when even sports products needed them for better performances. Some examples are base ball bats, fishing rods, storage tanks, bicycle frames, and even in hulls used in boats and sculls. Surprisingly, even in the field of medicine and science, composite materials are also widely used as in the case of some instruments used for orthopedic surgery.

We must admit that we are now living in the world where technology brings out the best to help us live life to the fullest. Advancement and modernization provided us with new ideas, inventions, and innovations to help us cherish a better life. An inescapable part of this technology is the carbon fiber tubes. As the demands of carbon fiber tubes grew more and more, a lot of ways are conveyed regarding the many different uses of this product. It is in this regards that this article is written for information dissemination on how we can properly use and apply this material to our advantage.

The best way to experience the real value of carbon fiber tubes is to have a general knowledge on where these are applied and how to use them. Nowadays, the use of this product is quintessential to the manufacturers of vehicles like cars, boats, planes and bicycles. It also becomes surprisingly necessary for the makers of sporting goods, as carbon fiber became an essential part of producing fishing rods, golf club shafts, rackets, baseball bats, skis, archery bows, radio-controlled cars, and the likes. Due to its light weight quality along with the best utilization of its rigidity, people tend to make this material a better choice compared to aluminum or steel.

With the vast favor it is getting from the public, it has become a major acceptance that people should be familiar on how this specialized material should be used and utilized. It is imperative, therefore, to learn how to do simple cut of these carbon fibers from carbon fiber tubes.

Simple tools are needed to acquire the perfect cut. These include pencil, ruler, masking tape; hack saw blade, and fine files. It is also worth noting that there are various cutting tools that are available in the market that are specifically intended for carbon fiber composites. For accuracy, every step should be detailed to ensure that no carbon fiber composite will find its way straight to the rubbish bin. We do not want to waste an expensive but ingenuous material just because we cut it into haste.