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2016
Conference Paper
Titel
Cleanroom suitability of equipment: Assessment methodology according to 14644-14 and its verification
Abstract
When performing manual handling steps, operators generate and emit varying quantities of contamination in an uncontrolled manner. To avoid the high risk of cross-contamination in cleanroom environments associated with these processes, an ever increasing number of these steps are being automated. In order to prevent products that have to be kept clean from becoming contaminated, it is therefore essential to know about the emission behavior of the respective machinery used in areas with controlled cleanliness levels. The most important type of contamination that affects all cleanroom environments is airborne particulate contamination, as it is defined in ISO 14644-1. The recently published draft ISO/DIS 14644-14:2014-10 describes a method for determining airborne particle emissions from equipment during typical operation. By interpreting these measurement results, cleanroom equipment can be assessed for suitability for use in clean controlled environments. On the one hand, this recently-defined method for assessing equipment enables hardware systems/machinery to be compared when used in typical modes of operation. In addition, the method allows areas of equipment where high quantities of particles are emitted to be identified. This helps to localize such sources of contamination and gives manufacturers the opportunity to optimize their equipment appropriately if they would like to do so. On the other hand, the procedure described in ISO/FDIS 14644-14 also gives an indication in which air cleanliness environments classified according to ISO 14644-1 the equipment can be used.