Clothes that are “dry clean only” are pre-spotted on a machine called a spotting board and the process is much more time consuming than pre-spotting clothes that are going to be laundered. This is because you can’t put any clothes that are wet inside of a dry cleaning machine due to the axious nature of dry cleaning solvents. Therefore each portion of the garment that becomes wet from the spotting gun must also be dried by the hot air peddle. Below is a diagram of a spotting board and an explanation of how the entire process works.

Dry Cleaner Spotting Board Controls 

-Vacuum Pedal

The vacuum foot pedal causes a sucking motion that allows the garment to hold fast to the end of the spotting board. This makes it easier for the person pre-spotting the dry cleaned item to keep the garment in one place and position the stain in the middle of the vacuum tray. This is important for the next step, applying steam to the stain area.

-Steam Pedal

The steam pedal is the work-horse of the spotting board. Once compressed, 300 – 350 degree steam hits the surface area of the garment and shakes loose the stained area. Commercial dry cleaning steam lines, by far, heat up hotter than any home pre-spotting steam kit on the market. That is because the steam lines are powered by a piece of equipment that powers the entire dry cleaning plant and is built to distribute extreme heat.

-Hot Air Pedal

As stated before all garment surface area that is hit with steam from the spotting gun must also be dried. Once depressed the hot air pedal sends hot air through the spotting gun and dries the area that has been wetted from the steam. The fact that you have to dry the area that is wet from the steam is the main reason that pre-spotting dry cleaning items very time consuming (compared to pre-spotting laundry, explained in Sir Austin’s next blog post).

SIDE NOTE

Although the pedals act independently from each other and accomplish different functions they are always used in conjunction with one another and the person pre-spotting the dry cleaned garment most of the time presses two of them together to combine functions.

-Spotting Gun

The spotting gun could be called the eyes of the different foot pedals and following is the process of pre-spotting a dry cleaned item from start to finish.

Apply steam to the stain. Next you determine what stain removal product will best fit the stain, apply the product and scrape the area with a scraping tool. Then you spray the area with the steam function hopefully lifting the stain. Finally you dry the area and check to see if the stain has been lifted. If it hasn’t the process is repeated until the stain is gone.

Next blog post we explore pre-spotting laundry