Scenario:

You've got one thing on your mind: Maintaining the highest levels of GMP for your facility. So when routine maintenance/changeover is required on your sterile/critical environment processing equipment, do you call in the auto mechanic from your local filling station to do the job?

In a sense, that's what you'd be doing when you equip your engineers, technicians and line mechanics with general industrial carbon steel hand tools. These tools are not designed for sterilization, and introduce a very serious risk of ferrous and particulate contamination to critical environments. As chrome plating begins to flake and exposed carbon steel oxidizes, both are a threat to production quality — HIGH RISK.

Go ahead, make a call down to your production department right now and ask them what kind of hand tools the mechanics use for routine maintenance and changeover, how they sanitize/sterilize them, where they bought them, and how much it cost? How are they holding up? How often have they been replaced in the last three years? If production/maintenance personnel knew that they could replace, once and for all, their deteriorating carbon steel tools with high performance stainless steel tools, designed for their application, would they be interested?

The fact is, specialized critical environment processing industries, such as Pharma, Bio, Food, and Beverage require hand tools designed to meet the same compliance standards that must be upheld for every other step in the production process. Tools that are designed and specified for the application and can be validated with the process equipment.

But more often than you'd think, this simple effective solution is overlooked. Simply put, replacing carbon tools with stainless steel tools can result in the reduction of risk of process contamination as well as a significant cost savings.

Steritool specializes in the manufacture of professional quality stainless steel hand tools designed for use in sterile, Cleanroom, corrosive, radioactive and other critical environments. Our hand tools are fully autoclaveable and offer an unsurpassed level of corrosion resistance. Since 1993 Steritool has been the leader in providing the pharmaceutical industry with tools that help pharmaceutical companies maintain GMP standards of cleanliness and sterility in production and research & development facilities.

Our mission began simply, and has remained so today: simple design for widespread applications. Our hex keys, wrenches, screwdrivers, and our wide range of other products combine first principles with modern technology: proven design with the latest advances in corrosion resistant stainless steel. Our ball end hex keys and screwdrivers are made from Custom 465 stainless, a proprietary alloy recently developed for aerospace applications by Carpenter Technologies. Hardened to Rockwell C 54, this alloy combines high strength with high torque capability and meets the strict requirements for corrosion resistance required for maintenance of production machinery within the pharmaceutical industry.

Replacing carbon steel tools every five to ten autoclave cycles is simply not economical. Steritool stainless steel tools can be autoclaved through thousands of cycles without deterioration and represent the most economical solution to maintaining quantifiable levels of sterility.

Because we are a "hands on" manufacturer and distribute directly from our plant, we are able to work closely with pharmaceutical production, maintenance, and quality control personnel to meet their requirements. We are continually supplementing our line of tools with new and custom products. Our capacity to adapt to meet a specific requirement is often the solution to precision applications on the production line where flexibility is not an option.