Engineered To Lift

Semiconductors, Satellites, and Cosmetics: The Cleanroom Lift Problem
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Naveen: [00:00:00] Another day, another call. The same thing we hear every day, "I just need another scissor lift." On the other end is a purchasing agent, maybe knowledgeable, maybe not. They bought other industrial equipment, but this is the first time they're dealing with some kind of specialty equipment. What they know is, like, standard booms and scissor lifts don't work.

They need something for their environment. But the fact that they called us and not any OEMs, JLGs, Sky Jacks, is indicative that they need something different. This time, I asked them, "Where are you using this lift?" They said, "We're in a clean room." The next logical question, "What is the classification of the clean room?"

Clean room can mean very broad things, and then that's, that's when we get the deer in the headlights look. We can't see the deer in headlights look on the phone, but I can hear it in his voice. For our listeners, in the last episode, we talk about the hazardous environments where you [00:01:00] keep the spark within, make sure our lift is not the source of ignition.

In this episode, we're gonna talk about how our lift is not gonna be the source of the contamination.

Welcome back to another week. I'm Naveen Vinta, here with Erik Niemi, our VP of Engineering. This is Engineer to Lift, your custom aerial work platforms podcast. We do the calculations, we read the regulations, and we tell you what matters. With that, Erik, would you give us the overview of the clean room, what it actually is?

Eric: Clean room, it's, it's not just, uh, a room that you've gotten cleaned. It's, uh, one where a space's airborne particle concentration based on size in particles per cubic meter of volume [00:02:00] of air. So that is limited and classified by the ISO standard, ISO 14644-1. It's a measured certified number that you hold and prove based on the customer's processing.

Naveen: I, I always thought that parts per million is what they generally use.

Eric: No,

Naveen: no. Maybe that is not... Yeah.

Eric: It i- it's more important of what size of particles per that volume of air.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: Uh, you can have .1 micron, which is really, really small-

Naveen: I see ...

Eric: up to five micron, which can be a boulder. I mean, it- Ah, I see.

Depending on the processing, it could be really big.

Naveen: Okay. Uh- From doing the research for this episode, I learned that PPM is air quality versus clean room measurements. Clean room is always particles per square, per cubic meter, right?

Eric: Per cubic meter. Okay. That is correct.

Naveen: Yeah. Please continue.

Eric: The overall volume of the room.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: We're trying to mitigate contamination. [00:03:00] In other words, remove as much particulate in the air as possible based on size. So it comes down to filtration, what are the emissions of the parts in the room, the machines in the room, what are they putting out into the air while they're operating, and as well as while they're standard- Okay

while they're sitting still.

Naveen: So ISO 9, 8, that's how it goes, right?

Eric: Right. ISO 9, that's probably, uh, a really clean kitchen or a really clean room that, uh- Okay.

Naveen: But, you know, commercial kitchens are not

Eric: the cleanest at all. No, not, not even close. Not even close. We're talking, uh, cosmetics manufacturing, medical equipment manufacturing, that kind of environment.

Naveen: We recently sent something to, who's that? Revlon? No. L'Oreal.

Eric: L'Oreal. Yep.

Naveen: Yeah. That is correct. They're in New Jersey, right?

Eric: Yeah. New Jersey. And it was all about contamination of their process. Uh-

Naveen: Okay ...

Eric: a contaminant in their product [00:04:00] could mean an allergic reaction, and that can be really important to mitigate down to the...

You wanna eliminate it as much as possible.

Naveen: I mean, those cosmetics are literally their bread and butter, and people literally put them on their face.

Eric: On their face, on their arms, everywhere.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: So there is a, a ladder of the types of clean rooms. You've got ISO Class 5 through 9. Is the typical. One through four are determined as smaller sizes.

The carts are, counts are so low that they're not meaningful

Naveen: There might be some kinda enclosure within a lab, clean lab-

Eric: Right ...

Naveen: but there might be some kinda enclosure that they do something in, I see.

Eric: That is correct.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: So typically we deal with ISO 9 and 8. Those are your standard clean room environments.

Down below that, you get into specialized processing for, uh, electronics assembly, down to mi- microelectronic [00:05:00] manufacturing. You've got a lot of, uh, five micron, you know, ISO 7, ISO 8, ISO 9. There's a typical count in those areas.

Naveen: I see.

Eric: Down below that, down to ISO 6 and below, that's where you have to start mitigating that count.

Naveen: Looks like these are the recent standards. Is there, used to be previous standards?

Eric: ISO has been kind of the leader in clean room environments, for sure.

Naveen: Okay, okay.

Eric: That's, uh, more of a worldwide acceptance. Before that, they were getting it as clean as they could- Okay ... and processing. But based on history that wasn't, uh, the electronics and the cosmetics weren't as stringently regulated as they are today.

Naveen: So where- where does each class live? I guess I'm looking at one to three might be, like, leading-edge semiconductors, TSMC, the top-of-the-top Blackwell chips, Nvidia. Four five is a semiconductor fab, and then six seven is spacecraft. Generally, that's where we [00:06:00] operate, correct?

Eric: That is where we operate for the most part.

That is correct.

Naveen: Okay. So we, we can cut to a previous clip of the original T100CR. Is

Eric: that- Yeah, T100CR which we developed for, uh, spacecraft manufacturing, uh, typically at Cape Canaveral or Houston or other- Okay ... areas where they're launching satellites ... at

Ted Perry: Fox6Now.com. An engineering company in Cudahy has become an important supplier for the aerospace industry.

They make machines that help to build satellites.

Kim Murphy: Only on Fox6, Gus Konorski explains the company took on a challenge that no one else wanted

Gus Gnorski: MLE deals with all kinds of lifting machines, but no one else builds lifts like this one. It's big, strong, and clean enough to work in a clean room at Cape Canaveral.

Man & Material Lift Engineering is less than 10 years old.

Jeff Bailey: Been very successful. This is, uh, our business has grown. Uh, we started in 2000 with [00:07:00] basically three people.

Gus Gnorski: They're up to 35 employees, and this week engineers from the Cape are in Cudahy to check over the machine that will handle their satellites.

Andy Hardy: It's a phenomenal machine. This is the second T100 that's been built, uh, for the Cape Canaveral Air Force area.

Gus Gnorski: The machines provide lifting power while satellites are being assembled. They have to be super clean because the satellites look at the stars to navigate while in orbit.

Jeff Bailey: So if there's any little speck of dust that's on there, it might take that as a star, and, and, uh, navigation will get, uh, um, messed up.

Gus Gnorski: MLE had developed other lifting machines for the aerospace industry.

Jeff Bailey: From there, we developed this 100-foot lift, uh, for Lockheed Martin and Boeing. Uh, and in ear- in the early days, there was a lot of specifications, and they needed, they needed to have things in a particular way.

Gus Gnorski: Jeff says it's the skilled workforce he's found in the Milwaukee area that helped him to meet those [00:08:00] specifications.

Andy Hardy: We had talked to several manufacturers, and, uh, they just, uh, felt that it was beyond the scope of their work, and Jeff was willing to take this on here at MLE.

Gus Gnorski: Now it's a successful partnership with a future that's as big as the stars. Gus Konorski, Fox 6 News

Kim Murphy: The company will also provide clean lifting equipment for aircraft companies making new generation jumbo jets

Naveen: The company previous iterations, one of the names was Man Lift Manufacturing?

Eric: Man and Material Lift Engineering was-

Naveen: Okay ...

Eric: probably the first clean room boom lift that we manufactured was in that timeframe, back in the early to mid-2000s.

Naveen: So in the show notes, we can put some calculations that how do you determine the clean room and everything. There's some formulas that we do. If you wanna consult with us before you purchase any equipment for your clean room, especially when it comes to aerial lift, you're more than welcome to reach out to us.

So and then we discussed some of the industries for the [00:09:00] clean room. So who lives in clean rooms and why are these necessary? Could you talk about something specific about the semiconductors?

Eric: Uh, semiconductor manufacturing, you're talking in the .1 micron to .5 micron range. The components are in the nano scale.

I

Naveen: see.

Eric: So you can see a micron, which would be 10 times the size. Imagine getting a particle into that circuit board that's-

Naveen: Oh, I see ...

Eric: up in the microns when you need to be in the nanotech ar- arena. So it's 10 times bigger than the smallest raceway that you've got in the circuit board. That could be a problem, especially if it's conductive.

So that's why you try to mitigate that as much as possible. You don't want that .5 m- that 5 micron particle getting onto your nanotechnology and creating a short.

Naveen: Ah, all right.

Eric: Basically what it does

Naveen: is- So Moore's La- like doubling every year. They're, they're putting billions of [00:10:00] transistors on a chip, right?

Eric: That is correct,

Naveen: yeah. Silicon has got so dense. Okay.

Eric: And you think about this little processing board in your cellphone That's small

Naveen: Yeah. Yeah It's

Eric: really small, and billions of calculations per minute

Naveen: So when they put it in the final machine, they can control the environment and everything in our phone.

They pack it so tight, but during manufacturing, that's, that's a process they have to control. That's why they need clean room

Eric: equipment That's why the clean room is there. And how do you keep that clean?

Naveen: Yeah, yeah. So spacecraft and satellites, I guess human things is also something that they don't wanna get on these-

Eric: Oh,

Naveen: sure

because when they go up in there and make a discovery, they don't wanna be like, "No, this was something that was contaminated. This actually- Yeah ... before it came."

Eric: It, the thing with spacecraft, if contamination gets inside of the craft, you brought it with you.

Naveen: Yeah, yeah.

Eric: If you don't bring it with you, that's, it's a different story

Naveen: You found something, yeah

Eric: Yeah

Naveen: Any, any other industries?

When I say, well, like pharma, [00:11:00] we already talked about cosmetics, but pharmaceuticals is also one of the biggest ones. We had AbbVie, Abbott Laboratories. Do you have any experience, like, talking to somebody in the pharma industry about clean rooms?

Eric: With clean rooms for spacecraft, yes. Uh, talked many times with a relatively good acquaintance.

I mean, he's almost a friend. Uh, his name's Don Bartleson

Naveen: Yeah

Eric: And he worked for Lockheed Martin as a- Dr.

Naveen: Dirt, you

Eric: used to- Dr. Dirt Okay, there you go. That was his nickname, was Dr. Dirt, and he didn't like it in his room, didn't like it on his equipment. I

Naveen: see, I see

Eric: So he was in charge of making sure that it doesn't get there

Naveen: So I guess Mr.

Bartleson is retired right now,

Eric: but- Uh, as from last I heard, he did retire, that, uh, there was a, a new person that took his position. Don't quite remember that person's name-

Naveen: Okay ...

Eric: but, uh, definitely want to get back in contact with him

Naveen: Yeah, I think recently Lockheed Martin reached out to us for refurbishing some of their clean room equipment.

Think Tim is going to [00:12:00] Cape Canaveral

Eric: Yeah, and, uh, uh, their, uh, equipment manager would be, uh, Robert Canudola

Naveen: Yeah, you're right. That,

Eric: that name rings a- And he's, he's got control of all of those lifts down there, and, uh, they're starting to get, show their age. They've been around a while, approximately 15 years Okay So they're looking at a refurb and making them more stable, better safety, and while maintaining their clean room status So that's where we come into, into the equation and, uh, we can refurb them, clean them up, make sure that all of the components are up to spec, and, uh, get them back into service as quickly as possible.

Naveen: Talking about Cape Canaveral and everything, I don't know who needs to hear this if nobody hasn't heard it yet. The richest man on the planet got there because of SpaceX, and then given all the activity in the space corridor, we are getting a lot of activity from clean rooms also.

Eric: Yes, definitely.

Naveen: So [00:13:00] all these clean rooms have to be, is implied in the name, it can't be any more obvious.

They have to be cleaned in between shifts, then what kind of chemicals they use will also matter, right?

Eric: Oh, sure. You're trying to eliminate not just dust in the air, but you're trying to eliminate bio-contaminants as well, bacteria, viruses, all that other, uh, stuff that you don't want in your processing.

Naveen: Carbon, yeah.

Eric: So it's, it's important to maintain the cleanliness of the room as well. We're using ladders and scaffold and, and such. Well, how are you maintaining that? How are you keeping it clean? Is it washed down? Are you wiping? What are you using to clean it with? That some materials can't handle the anti-bio chemical that you're using to clean them.

So that becomes part of the equation

Naveen: And before, in the next section, we can jump into what are the processes we do to the machine to make it clean room compliant. [00:14:00] When somebody calls us about it, we need to know about the environments, entry, exit, what kind of filtration, so we can make sure we give them the right equipment.

Eric: That is correct. Uh, what kind of, uh, particle size count per cubic meter are you looking to achieve? Then we have to look at the equipment, what kind of off-gassing, what kind of chemicals are we using, what kind of paint, what is the metal, how is it protected from corrosion, and all of the filtration that we would have to put into the systems on the machine so that we mitigate that contaminant from getting in the room.

Naveen: So T100CR clean room machine might be... Is that, uh, custom built from the ground up?

Eric: That is custom built from the ground up because of all of the possible iterations of paint- I see ... materials. So we have to control all of that in-house to make sure that we're not introducing something that could off-gas [00:15:00] or, uh, create particulates as it's operating.

Naveen: But sometimes how do we make the distinction? Should we start from the scratch building a machine, or we take an existing JLG and then make it clean room compliant? So what are the trade-offs there?

Eric: Uh, the trade-offs are, uh, what materials is the lift constructed with? What is the paint? Are there greases, oils?

It, it's not just the structure, it's not just the metal. It's all of the rubbers, the plastics, the paint, the, uh, electronic controls. How are they enclosed? So there's a, another level of Uh, mitigation that we have to go through. So if you get a lift that was painted with a paint that off-gases, now suddenly the paint is an issue.

You have to strip it all. So there's a time constraint with having to take all of those pieces, having them blasted, having them cleaned, having them re-prepped, repainted. That's, that [00:16:00] could be a huge cost differential between that and okay, we start, we know what metal we started with.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: We know what paint we're using.

Naveen: We control each and every thing.

Eric: Every- Okay ... every last item needs to be controlled.

Naveen: Okay. That's how we achieve.

Eric: Right down to the plastic bushings.

Naveen: Sometimes we don't know what kind of paint the OEM used. We're just guessing. Right. Then that might be the difference.

Eric: That is correct. And then what process did they use to paint it?

Did they get contaminants when they were painting from some other process happening in the same facility? So that's wh- that's how, what level we have to control it to.

Naveen: So some of the motors that we use, we put bands because of the, some of the shavings escape, and then that can be a contaminant. Right, uh- Obviously, all of these to the naked eye it looks like a clean machine, but

Eric: Yeah, it's, it's confusing at times.

A brush DC motor off-puts particulates. And because of the armature rotating across the bushing creating friction-

Naveen: The RPMs [00:17:00]

Eric: it runs at ... creating a particulate. Yep.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: And based on the operating range of the motor, what's the particulate off-count gonna be? Unknown. So how do you, how do you mitigate that?

Well, you can enclose it. That's the number one easiest step is to just put it in an enclosure that's got a filtration system on it so that the particulate does not get into the environment. Now, that has to be cleaned So you've gotta start out with an enclosure that's already meets the paint, the material, the sealants.

It's, it's involved, and you get the right filter that removes the right size of particulate and control the amount of air that passes between the inside of the enclosure and the outside.

Naveen: Sometimes in remanufacturing, there's already grease that the OEM used. You can't take all of that and then re-grease it, so that's already- It's

Eric: very

Naveen: difficult-

Eric: Yeah

at best, for sure. Okay.

Naveen: It's better to start from scratch.

Eric: Than when you [00:18:00] know what exactly you put into it. That is correct.

Naveen: So in, in this space, clean rooms, like 100-foot clean rooms, 135-foot clean rooms, I've not come across anybody who does this.

Eric: It's mostly spacecraft industry, uh, and you're, you're assembling a satellite to a rocket.

You don't want the particulates getting into the, where the satellite is enclosed. Once it's inside the fairing of the rocket, you brought it with you.

Naveen: Yeah. Yeah. And then nobody, I mean, like Bailey, there's nobody out there that manufactures this that I know of.

Eric: I'm not aware of anyone else that is in that clean room market and capable, has the knowledge and the history to make that happen the same way that we do.

Medical device manufacturing, there's another subset of the- Pharma

Naveen: somehow, yeah ... pharma

Eric: industry. So actually, they're manufacturing parts in a clean room. Uh, say the forceps that went in and, uh, [00:19:00] removed the foreign body from your body- Yeah. Yeah ... that has to be clean. So how is it manufactured? They know the material.

They know the place that it's being built, manufactured. They're cleaning it before they put it into a packaging, which also needs to be clean. So that's where the clean room- Sterile, yeah ... sterile environment, when the nurse hands the, the forceps to the doctor, you're ensured that it was clean, that there wasn't some bacteria on it or some particulate that could cause internal injuries in the long term.

Yeah, there are other environments, and then, well, how do you clean a clean room?

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: That has to be maintained as well, and the power goes out, and your air suddenly becomes contaminated from the outside, how do you clean that room? Are you using ladders? Are you using scaffold? How are you cleaning it? So call us.

We can help. We don't like ladders. We don't like scaffold because there is [00:20:00] the human factor that can come into play there. One misstep and you have an incident.

Naveen: And then once that clean room, the amount of Capital expenditure that takes to put up that clean room, every shift that is out of working, that costs a lot of money

Eric: That's a lot of money.

Naveen: Yeah.

Eric: And that's, they have to be up and running 24-

Naveen: 24/7,

Eric: yeah ... uh, 24/7. There's no, no question about that. And you have to maintain that cleanliness throughout that time period.

Naveen: Throughout, yeah. You can't take, you can't shut down the shift to clean the equipment.

Eric: Yeah. No, they have to finish the process and then make sure that it stays clean, so they gotta come in with a shift of cleaning crew and get it back to standard so that they can start the next process.

Naveen: So we talked about, uh, Factory Mutual for some of the, uh, for certifications in North America. As clean room From what I understand, the clients usually do their own inspection and then accept. We provide a certificate [00:21:00] of conformance. This is the standards we followed when we manufactured this

Eric: Right.

Here's, here's our data, here's what we've manufactured to, here's the materials that we're using to construct it. The customer then takes that, puts it in an enclosure, tests it to ensure that it isn't putting particulates into the environment.

Naveen: If any of the customers want certification from a third party, what are the options that we might have here?

Eric: Uh, third party, uh, nationally recognized testing laboratories would be a good route to go. Uh, in other words, Underwriters Laboratories, uh, UL Approvals, Factory Mutual is another possible source. Uh, there's a host of different companies that do clean room certification. They also do some certification of components and products that are put into that environment.

They test those as well for off-gassing, for particulate count. So they're testing the parts. They [00:22:00] can possibly test the entire machine as well.

Naveen: Sure. So when these, like, satellite companies, aerospace and defense, they're putting up a whole clean room itself, they'll have somebody on site who's a specialist that can-

Eric: That's

Naveen: where-

certify the clean room and everything that goes into it.

Eric: And call

Naveen: ty- They'll have SME on site, I see.

Eric: Yeah, typically called a contamination engineer.

Naveen: Okay. That's-

Eric: I.e., there's Dr. Dirt. Here he comes again.

Naveen: Okay, okay.

Eric: So... All

Naveen: right. This is all, this is all very helpful information given the amount of activity going on in the space corridor.

Please reach out to us if we can help you in getting your mission be more successful, we would love to be part of that mission.

Eric: Absolutely. Give us a call. Happy to help.

Naveen: Yep. As far as, like, procuring agents out there, and then the other engineers or plant managers, you can, if you wanna learn more about what the process is, what does contamination actually cost you, if you know the cost of [00:23:00] having a contaminant in, in your environment, that might prove to be very, very costly.

And then we wanna know what chemistry that cleans the room, meaning what you use to clean those machines, what's the footprint, the doors, aisles, floor loading, air balance. We take all of that into consideration to give you an equipment that works exactly to support your mission.

Eric: Yeah. We don't, we don't wanna violate the space of your machinery and cause an incident where somebody's run the lift into a space where it wasn't suited for.

Naveen: Okay.

Eric: We wanna avoid that.

Naveen: This is all helpful information. Thank you, Eric. To recap, we have the same scissor lift That can operate in a hazardous environment, that's when you keep the, keep it from being the source of ignition. When it comes to a cleanroom, we can have the same scissor lift not emit particulate into your environment so as to contaminate the, your cleanroom.

So what, what is some of the other things? I know we change the [00:24:00] grease and then we put bands around these motors. Are, are batteries a concern in these environments?

Eric: Yeah, power source can be a, an, a huge contributor to particulates in the air in, in the form of, uh, off-gas vapors.

Naveen: Oh, I see.

Eric: And so you have to also control that.

So you have to have a watering system to maintain the batteries. You also have to control when they're off-gassing when they are being discharged. So you've got, you're drawing off the power while there's a chemical reaction inside of the battery to provide that power. How are you controlling that off-gassing?

So you have to have a ventilation system on the batteries, and just the standard automotive battery just isn't gonna cut it.

Naveen: Cut it, yeah. I guess there's a lot that goes into it. So when, if you're, once you get the cleanroom lift, it's not okay to get a cleanroom lift, the ongoing maintenance and then everything that you use inside it-

Eric: Yeah, the maintenance is important.

You have to change the filters on the enclosure in periodic [00:25:00] maintenance. You have to ensure that the battery still, uh, maintains the level of power. Do you have the right amount of water in it? Is there a ventilation system on the battery? You have to maintain that, has to be clean. How are you controlling the gassing?

Naveen: Okay. Okay.

Eric: It's not just about the power source. It's not just the motor, but how are you getting the power to the motor Gas or diesel or LP engine isn't gonna cut it. Your exhaust has all kinds of particulates in it.

Naveen: Sure.

Eric: That's why battery power is the preferred source.

Naveen: So what changes here between the hazardous location and the clean room is just the environment.

The environment dictates what type eq- equipment, and then what do we do to the machine to make it ATEX compliant with the environment.

Eric: Right. What components, what materials are we using? Is there friction? Are we going to generate particulates? What kind of particulates are they? And we mitigate that.

Naveen: Manufacturing process can look similar, but could be very different [00:26:00] based on your environment. That's why we are engineer to order. We take every requirement that you have into consideration before coming up with a solution. We work with your engineering team, your safety personnel, to make sure we are meeting all the requirements before we turn this into our floor f- to go through the manufacturing.

Eric: Yeah. If you're not sure, contact us. We'll help you work through it. We'll ask, maybe ask the questions that you haven't thought of.

Naveen: Sure. Exactly. That's

Eric: why we're here.

Naveen: Yep. Okay. Thank you, folks, for tuning in. In the next episode, we'll talk about for the hazardous environments, we talked about Factory Mutual being the certification in North America.

We'll talk about ATEX and IECEx. ATEX applies to Europe, IECEx applies to Asia and other regions. We'll talk about how we translate regulations between these three environments. Thank you all for watching.

Eric: Look forward to the conversation. Stay informed, stay [00:27:00] protected