Benefits of Properly Automating Your Pretreatment Washer Process

Maintaining proper cleaning and pretreatment is crucial for achieving the best performance from a finishing line. In an ideal process, everything downstream benefits: cleaner parts, better coating adhesion, fewer defects, and smoother production.

As production demands grow, more facilities are turning to automation to stabilize their pretreatment washer process. Automation improves consistency and operator safety, reduces errors and costs, and generally ensures the chemistry works the way it’s meant to.

At Americo Chemical Products, we help plants understand where automation can make the biggest impact and how to implement it properly.

Why Automation Matters

Pretreatment systems involve a lot of moving parts—temperatures, spray pressures, chemical concentrations, water levels, ph ranges, and bath age. When these things are controlled manually, variations are inevitable, creating “peaks and valleys” in the chemistry. Operators do their best, but loads and environmental conditions can change. Automation brings stability to that process.

When the pretreatment washer becomes more consistent, the rest of the finishing line becomes more consistent too. Automation supports improvements across safety, cost, quality, and environmental performance.

• Operational efficiency: Automation helps keep concentrations steady and reduces the need for manual adjustments, leading to faster, more predictable cycles.
• Quality and consistency: With the right automation in place, parts come out cleaner and coatings adhere more reliably, eliminating the variability that often leads to defects or rework.
• Cost savings: Facilities see reductions in chemical waste and labor demands. Equipment also lasts longer when cycles run at the right settings with optimized chemical ratios.
• Safety and compliance: By limiting direct chemical handling by staff, automation makes it easier for teams to stay safe and meet regulatory requirements. It also creates a more predictable, trackable process.
• Environmental impact: Automated systems conserve resources by optimizing water and energy use and reducing unnecessary chemical discharge. This helps create a smaller environmental footprint.

Together, these benefits make automation one of the most effective ways to strengthen your pretreatment process and overall finishing performance.

Working Together for a Cleaner Process

Automation gives pretreatment washers the consistency and stability they need to perform at their best.

Our team evaluates your current washer setup, reviewing load sizes, water quality, chemical balance, and any bottlenecks that affect consistency. We help select equipment that works with your chemical program, ensure dosing systems and pumps are calibrated, and fine-tune wash cycles based on your soils, production goals, and past performance data. Even with automation, oversight matters—so we provide ongoing monitoring, trend reviews, and operator training to keep the system running as it should.

With Americo’s chemistry, technical support, and hands-on guidance, your operation can eliminate many of the manual adjustments that slow production.