Convertech Pacific Article Summary
2 Step Transfer Contact Cleaning ¡ÈKSM SuperClean¡É / Bill Fleming / President Hasegawa Fleming International, Ltd.
Issued on 2002-2nd
Heading: Technical Progress
Title: 2 Step Transfer Contact Cleaning ¡ÈKSM SuperClean¡É
Author / Company : Bill Fleming / President Hasegawa Fleming International, Ltd.
1. Introduction
Controlling environmental cleanliness in the workplace is hardly a new topic. For well over 30 years the need to do so has been felt in such industries as IC and PCB production. Japan has often lead the way in innovation, a country where there are far more clean room facilities than in the US. Creating a clean room environment requires the establishment of clean room facilities with concomitant QC activities, process control, control of materials, packaging and so on. It is a nonstop, ongoing process.
The dramatic change felt today is not one of type, but of extent. The manufacturing applications needing enhanced cleanliness are increasing to the point where many main line converting applications now require it. They are literally being constrained to ¡Èclean up their acts¡É in order to meet the requirements of ever more technologically innovative products that permeate our everyday lives. Examples that come to mind include laminates for flexible circuits, LCD and touch panels that are found in so many consumer products, coatings for transparent film and glass and quality gravure coating.
Where in a mass production converting process do you start controlling cleanliness? How do create a ŽÒ¡Éclean space¡É for a three storey coater / dryer with over 100 rollers housed in a shed? Once created, how do you maintain the cleanliness with thousands of meters of material, numerous operators and vehicles moving through it each day?
It is often said that two dirty things that should never enter a clean room are work materials and humans. In addition, the constant movement, the blowing of fans and ventilators are inimical to a clean environment. Reasonable measures cannot be expected to stop creeping contaminant migration.
Something is required for large, inherently dirty operations to effectively control contamination where it matters most: immediately prior to critical operations - in other words, operations where the presence of contaminants has a direct and immediate effect on quality. If this can be achieved, then control of the larger environment becomes far less critical. If materials are clean at the moment of coating or lamination, then it really does not matter if the work site is class 1,000 or 100,000. If swarf can be gathered and removed immediately after slitting or cutting, it cannot not spread down line - or even up line. This paper will consider the possibility of finding such a system.
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