UNIVERSAL CITY, CA: At the Academy’s recent engineering awards presentation, Lipsner-Smith Company and Consolidated Film Industries (CFI) were honored with an Engineering Award for their joint development of the new Model CF-8200 Ultrasonic Film Cleaning Machine.

The award, which is a plaque containing the Emmy trademark, is in recognition for achievements that exhibit a high level of engineering and are important to the progress of the industry.

In anticipation of new regulations governing the use of perchloroethylene for film cleaning, Lipsner-Smith and CFI worked together to develop this high-speed film cleaning machine to provide safe and effective film cleaning using 3M™ Novec™ Engineered Fluid HFE-8200.

This 3M fluid, which has zero ozone depletion potential and is not a VOC, achieves film cleaning results comparable to perchloroethylene when used in the new CF-8200 Ultrasonic Film Cleaning Machine.

Accepting the award for Lipsner-Smith at the July 11 luncheon, held at the Sheraton Hotel, was Jonathan Banks, the company’s president, and for CFI, Fabian Pinto, Vice-President of Engineering.

3M’s Novec Hydrofluoroether range of fluids have been tested for over 5 years as a potential replacement for chlorinated solvents.

Much of the initial work was done by Eastman Kodak’s Rochester facility where the hydrofluoroether was subjected to analysis for compatibility with film over the long and short term, dye stability and the potential to leach plasticser. All were found to be more than satisfactory.

The technical efforts to develop the CF-8200 by Lipsner Smith and CFI had the objective of making HFE an economically viable product, and to ensure acceptable film cleaning performance standards so that the other advantages of HFE’s could be gained by users in a “real-world” situation."

Thanks also go to Ming Liu, Senior Chemist at CFI, to Frank Pettrone, Senior Technical Specialist and his team at Kodak, and to Brian Butler, Lipsner-Smith Director of Engineering, his engineers John Lardino, David Vicik, Jim Omiatek, and to Production Supervisor Mike Kosoy.