MPF Products Installs New ISO Cleanroom

MPF Products recently installed a new 1,000 sq ft. state-of-the-art ISO Cleanroom featuring ISO Class 8, Class 7, and Class 5 sections used to ensure the highest quality super polished, low absorption optics and high-power coatings available.

What Is A Cleanroom?

Cleanrooms are controlled environments where airborne pollutants like dust, dirt, microbes, and other particles are filtered out to ensure the entire room is as clean as possible.

The air within the room is cleaned by first filtering all outside air through HEPA or ULPA filters before entering the room. The air within the cleanroom itself is also continually filtered, forcing unclean air back out where it recirculates through the filtration system, and the process begins again.

Cleanrooms are typically used in manufacturing facilities specializing in electronics, medical equipment, or pharmaceutical products. They’re also used in hospital operating rooms to ensure that patients are protected during surgery and in isolation rooms to ensure that highly contagious patients do not put other patients or healthcare workers at risk.

Why Are Cleanrooms Important?

With laser technology, especially high-energy lasers, it is extremely important that all optical surfaces be as clean as possible. Any particles landing on an optical surface can create absorption when the laser is in use. The contaminated particles burn, causing temperature changes resulting in poor performance, damage, or destruction of the optic.

At MPF Products, we’re utilizing our cleanrooms to keep particles out of our production and testing environments. However, in other industries, such as pharmaceuticals and virology, cleanrooms are also used in the reverse – for keeping potentially hazardous particles in.

Cleanroom Classifications

Cleanrooms are divided into classes based on the number of particles allowable in the air. ISO Class 8 and Class 7 are the most common types. Generally, each class has ten times fewer particles than the class above it. A Class 8 cleanroom can have up to 100,000 particles per square foot of air with 15–25 air changes per hour. Class 7 cleanrooms can only have 10,000 with 30–60 air changes per hour. A Class 5 cleanroom allows only 100 particles per square foot of air, with 240–360 air changes per hour.

Our ISO 5 or Class 100 Cleanroom is considered a “Super Clean Cleanroom,” an ultra-clean classification of cleanroom. ISO 5 Cleanrooms are sought in photonics, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, nanotechnology, solar, and semiconductor industries. Many advanced DoD, aerospace, medical, and high-power laser products require or could benefit from an ISO 5 cleanroom.

About MPF Products, Inc.

Since 1994, MPF Products, Inc. has been recognized by customers, suppliers, and employees as the leading expert in ceramic-to-metal sealing technology. Located on a 50-acre campus, minutes outside of Greenville, SC, they have been supplying feedthroughs and viewports to Fortune 500 companies, cutting-edge research laboratories, and emerging tech startups for nearly 30 years. In 2021 they received the ISO 9001:2015 certification for quality management systems.