Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[Music] You might be wondering, "what is a clean room?"
A clean room is a controlled environment where the concentration of airborne particles is kept within specified limits.
A typical office building has between 500,000 and 1 million particles per cubic foot of air that are .5 microns or larger.
In our clean room, we try to keep that number below a thousand.
Particles can come from dust, pollen, bacteria, skin, cosmetics, perfume, clothing, even paper.
In the clean room, the major source of contamination or particles is the workers.
That is why it is essential that we learn proper gowning procedures to help protect the clean room from us.
Before entering the clean room, make sure to leave all food, drinks and personal items behind.
Also, for safety reasons, no open-toed or open-heeled shoes are allowed.
When you walk inside the gowning room, you'll immediately notice the sticky mat located on the floor.
Take three to five baby steps on the mat to help remove contamination from the bottom of your shoes.
Once done, take out two shoe covers and put them on your shoes. You are now ready to begin gowning.
We start with a bouffant cap or hair net to avoid any loose hair from finding its way into the room.
A hair may seem small but in the clean room it can have disastrous effects. Ensure the hair net covers all your hair and goes over your ears.
If necessary, you may use two hair nets. Next, we move to the SNUD.
Known as a beard SNUD we wear it not just for facial hair but also to help control spittle.
When worn properly, the SNUD should cover all facial hair, if any, as well as your chin and go over your nose.
The NASA mission was once costly delayed because of a failed IC.
Later investigation showed that the cause of failure was due to human saliva being introduced during the manufacturing process.
The last item for the head is your safety glasses. Despite the fact that they can help with particles, they protect your eyes.
The clean room suit, also known as a bunny suit, helps to contain the particles that our bodies naturally shed every day.
By wearing it, the clean room suit acts as a personal filter and prevents particulate from entering the atmosphere of the clean room.
With the clean room suit on, it is now time for the clean room boots. Why the boots?
Although the blue shoe covers keep our shoes from contaminating the ground, they do nothing to help keep particulates in the suit.
The clean room boots help to contain particles that would otherwise be released through the pant legs.
Last, but very important, blue rubber gloves. Everywhere we touch we leave oily prints which are a form of contamination.
The gloves help eliminate this.
Also similar to the clean room boots, they help to keep particles in the clean room suit that would normally escape through the sleeves.
Be sure, when putting on your gloves, you grasp them only by the cuff to avoid covering them with contamination.
Then pull the gloves on over the bunny suit. Again, this will prevent particles from escaping into the room.
Once the gloves are on, don't touch any part of your skin. For example, touching your forehead or scratching your neck.
If you must, then return to gowning and replace your gloves. You're now ready to enter the micro fab. Let's review.
First, no food, drink or personal items are allowed in the fab. For safety reasons, no open-toed or open-heeled shoes are to be worn in the fab.
On entering the fab, make sure to take a few baby steps on a sticky mat to clean off the bottom of your shoes.
Put on shoe covers and you are ready to start gowning.
Following the general rule of gowning from the top-down, place the bouffant cap on your head and the beard SNUD over your face.
Make sure to cover your ears chin and nose. Put on your safety glasses.
Put on the clean room suit taking special care that it does not touch the ground. Clean room boots and then finally gloves.
When you're done in the clean room, degowning is basically the reverse of gowning with a few exceptions.
The general rule for degowning is bottom-up.
So without removing your gloves, take off the clean room boots and put the bottoms
of the boots together to help contain any particles picked up off the floor.
You can then roll the boots together for storage in your cubby.
After putting the boots away, you may remove your gloves and dispose of them in the trash.
Then it's off with the suit once again being careful to keep it off the floor.
Both the suit and safety glasses can be stowed in your cubby while the bouffant cap and SNUD may be taken off and thrown away. -- [Music]