Product Spotlight – Tempest Ionizing Air Blower

Tempest Ionizing Air Blower and the Background on its Name

Webster’s Dictionary defines a Tempest as a windy storm or a disturbance.  When static electricity is present, especially on products assembled in electronics or medical device manufacturing facilities, it takes a disturbance to break the forces of static attraction of particles and electrostatic discharge (esd).  Static Clean is excited to introduce the Tempest Ionizing Air Blower used in work stations where static sensitive devices are handled.

TEMPEST is also a National Security Agency specification and NATO certification to protect the USA from leaks of information via spying by such methods as radio and electrical signals, sounds and vibrations.  The bottom line on either Tempest is that the goal is to protect sensitive materials.

The Tempest Ionizing Air Blower uses a fan to induce ambient air past energized emitter pins to deliver ionized air to the desired location.  The airflow is regulated by a speed control whereby the ionized air can be either gentle or more aggressive simply by changing the fan speed position.  The unit includes a replaceable filter to clean the air that enters the fan.  It also has an emitter point cleaner, built into the front shroud, making maintenance simple.  As a comfort factor, the Tempest also includes a heater with its own on/off switch.  Integrated into the Tempest is the electronics required to create a balanced stream of positive and negative ions.

 

When Is It Time To Hang It Up?

That’s All folks!

I was chatting with a friend/customer the other day and asking him if he was still playing hockey in a men’s no-check league. His response was that it was “time to hang it up”. It got me to thinking about all the things we do in life where we can use or connect that phrase.

The obvious meaning of hang it up is to stop doing something that you’ve done for a long time. How about hang it up as in hat, coat, phone, pictures, and decorations.   The gloomier side of the phrase can mean break-up, bring to a close-like a chapter in one’s life- and cease, which has very strong connotations, but the one that I like the most is “bag it”.   Many of us have used the phrase, “why don’t you bag it” on people we know. From watching detective TV shows involving criminal investigations and forensics, “bag it” refers to putting evidence in a sealed bag or container.

Plastic, All Wrapped Up?

There are many kinds of bags and containers that are produced every day in factories throughout the world.   They can be either converted film, blow molded containers, injection molded boxes or cast materials, but can you imagine not having a plastic storage bag or container to keep food in the refrigerator?   While we all try to be “green”, the plastics converters are working to make improvements with bio-degradable, engineered materials, but the reality is that plastic bags and containers are creature comforts that make our lives easier and will be around for a long time.

Most plastics come from petroleum based resin, that by the time it becomes a finished product on the various machines, it has been subjected to high amounts of static electricity. These unwanted static charges can cause defect in the materials, lost production because of having to run the equipment slower than possible, particle attraction which reduces quality and jamming in the process, which causes down-time and lost profits. Static Clean provides many types of ionizing air products that reduce the ill effects of static electricity. They are available in the form of static bars, blowers, nozzles, air knives and cleaning systems.

In time, the choice of materials will lean more towards environmentally friendly resins that may not cause static levels that are harmful, but until then Static Clean can help improve the process, because most of us would have to agree that it is not quite time yet to “Hang It Up” when it comes to creature comforts like plastic bags.

Where Have All the Good Times Gone?

Questions, Answers and  a Tidbit about Life and Business:

Where have all the golfers gone?

About 10 years ago the golf industry hit its peak. Golf balls, golf clubs, and related clothing products flew off the shelves. That has all changed now, with fewer players entering the sport. The decline is not really attributed to a lack of interest, but the time it takes away from family and the skyrocketing costs of a round of golf, its equipment and appropriate attire. The World Golf Foundation claims that in 2005 over 30 million participants played over 550 million rounds of golf. In 2014, the number of players shrunk to 25 million participants playing 465 million rounds. The fallout will have a financial impact on many suppliers to the game.

Speaking of suppliers to the game, with the support of Monroe Electronics, one of our long-standing suppliers, we worked on an “Early Warning” lightning-detection system for golf courses that was based on an electrostatic field meters that are commonly used to measure static in industrial applications, especially the plastics industry. Golfers running around an open course with metal sticks in their hands during a lightning strike is not a wise decision. The decline in the number of golfers is not our fault!!

Where have all the Rich Folks gone?

Obviously, they are still playing golf, but physically they are starting to relocate. I was watching the Tonight Show about two years ago and his guest was Will Smith. They showed a clip of Will Smith from a French TV interview, where Will said that he was okay with paying higher taxes as they do in France. He was shocked when told that the President of France has advocated a 75% tax rate for those making more than one million euros. Has Will Smith changed his line of thinking? Wealthy people are no longer bound by country.

The billionaire founder of Facebook fled to Singapore and gave up his US citizenship, as did 1700 rich Americans last year who left the US, and the trend is growing.

At the same time, the new rich that are coming out of Russia and China want to come to America. There has been quite a bit in the news lately about Russia controlling an increasing amount of the world’s supply of plutonium (an element used in nuclear weaponry), but little is heard about Russia controlling Polonium-210. Polonium was discovered and isolated in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie in Poland, and was produced in the United States during World War II, as part of the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb. It gets its name from the Latin word for Poland, which is Polonia. How about the fugitive Russian officer, Alexander Litvinenko, who didn’t agree with Putin. He died in the UK when someone dropped a couple of chips of P-210 into his drink and he died from radioactive poisoning. Today, common uses for safe versions of P-210 include anti-static devices, but when the US gave up production of Polonium, it left Russia as the main producer of the radioisotope. It is produced in nuclear reactors and it has the chemical symbol of Po.

 What was the Bonfire of the Vanities?

Not the book or the movie, but in real life, these were real bonfires. Throughout the 1400s some of the strict religious in Italy wanted to purge the world of sinful pursuits. They advocated for the destruction of clothing, jewelry, and priceless works of art. The largest of such fires took place in 1497 in Florence, Italy, the home of the Italian Renaissance and Leonardo Da Vinci. Citizens were required or forced to bring their valuables to the town square or piazza to be thrown into huge pile for burning. Talk about a sin!! On a related subject, static electricity discharges can cause fires and other devastation, but to intentionally destroy world class art is completely ridiculous.

Where have all the Static Companies Gone?

In an effort to tie this all together, I would say that business in many instances follows the ebb and flow of society. Businesses are born and die based on demographics, trends, movement to regions of lower labor costs, to be closer to raw materials and of course, operating in a mature market. About 25 years ago, there were close to twenty US-based manufacturers of anti-static devices. It doesn’t mean that globally there are fewer players, but in the USA you can count the number of ionizer device manufacturers on one hand. Mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, outright closures, and a migration towards the emerging markets, especially Asia, are the major reasons for the number of companies. Static Clean remains one of the last suppliers who rely on strong customer relationships for its continued survival and continued success. Please consider Static Clean for all of your static control needs, so that we don’t have to one day ask the question, “Where have all the good times gone”?

Send in the Clowns

The Double Entendre

“Send in the Clowns” was written by Stephen Sondheim in 1973 for a musical called A Little Night Music. He was asked quite often what the song was all about. He said that the clowns in the title had nothing to do with circus clowns. We all try to figure out what an artist means by particular lyrics of a song or a piece of literature. The real key to this song was “Don’t bother, they’re here”. Of course, ‘they’ refers to clowns and refers to us, and that at times we are the fools. Jan Henderson wrote the following:

“In a lifelong search for meaning, I have found the clown to be the best, all-encompassing metaphor for the human condition – an uncompromising mirror to look into for glimpses of the truth. We look at the clown and see ourselves – our hopes, dreams, fear, and virtues, our flaws and our process. Clowns show us how as a species, we get into trouble – without ever meaning or wanting to – and how we sometimes stumble into sub-line solutions to our problems”.

The Great Clown Shortage-No Laughing Matter

Wow!! Who knew that clowns were just for kids? However, the number of clowns in the US has been shrinking at an alarming rate. The World Clown Association has seen its members decline from 3500 in 2004 to 2400 clowns in 2014, with the average age over 40 years old. Even though a clown can average $200-$300 for a birthday party, younger people seem to show a lack of interest in this noble profession. For those that are left in the clown business, there are always challenges.

A recent chat forum for clowns posed this question. “I use a lot of silks in my show. In the summer I have no problems. I set my iron at the lowest setting and iron them when they are real bad. But in winter I end up with a lot of static electricity and wrinkles in my clown suit.

“I tried static sprays but that doesn’t seem to work, so I misted them, but didn’t want to soak them. Does anyone have any other ideas?”

Others wrote, with suggestions to use a dryer sheet and to rub the silk clothing and props with the various brands of static sheets, which will take out 90% of the static. A popular response was to run the silk clothes under cold water and spread them out flat on paper towels and wait for them to dry. Do some of these suggestions sound “silly” to you? Actually, they’re not. These recommendations are based in fact and while not always sensible, they work, but there may be more practical solutions.

Static Free Solutions

Conductive and stainless steel fibers have been added to clothing to make them static-free during the manufacturing process in the textile industry. With enough of these static reducing threads, static electricity is controlled to a manageable level. In munitions plants, these conductive fibers are a total requirement in keeping operators from static electricity to the point of discharge, which can cause an explosion or a fire. Besides using these additives in clothing, flooring, and work surfaces, ionization in combinations of passive, nuclear and electrical designs are also implemented. In the electronics industry the same precautions are common in protecting sensitive devices that are susceptible to an electrostatic discharge (ESD).

When it comes to safety and reliability, there’s no time to clown around. Please contact Static Clean with the confidence in knowing that if we can’t solve your problem, we will put you in the right direction. How else can we look in the mirror and feel good about addressing something so serious?

Static Clean Now Cleaner by Working with Polymag Tek

Power in a Name

What’s in a name? Customer have always considered the name, “Static Clean” to be synonymous with producing products that clean sheets and webs in the Converting Industries. For many years, our company has been manufacturing WebVAC Systems that achieve the cleaning criteria that many customers expect. How clean is clean? The cleaning level or efficiencies that are reached with the Static Clean- WebVAC and similar systems is a 95% success rate in the 25-30 micron range.

Raising the Bar

With multi-laminations, higher cleanliness standards of materials used in notebook, laptop, television screens, finer lines of resolution in printed circuit boards, and the growing medical device packaging market, the bar has been raised. Demands have been placed on suppliers to deliver sheeted or web based paper and plastic materials that contain less debris, or what is now called Foreign Matter (FM).

PolyMag Tek LogoA Higher Standard of Clean

In an effort toward continuous improvement, Static Clean has partnered with Polymag Tek. What’s in a name? Polymag Tek’s original business model was to provide materials and equipment to clean magnetic tape. Does everyone remember magnetic tape? Back around 1928, magnetic tape was invented in Germany to record sound. In the 1950s and 1960s, magnetic tape was widely used by IBM in the storage of computer data, particularly for backups. In the 1990s, the pressure was on to store even more data on mag tape and it meant making sure that the surface of the tape was totally clean. How clean is clean now?

Polymag Tek’s Contact Cleaning rolls and equipment achieved cleaning levels down into 10 microns and below beginning in 1994. For a greater understanding of the technology, please visit their website by the following link to their “Dirt Report

For information on their full line of hand rollers, web and sheet cleaners, as well as process roll cleaners including the water wash systems, please visit their website at www.polymagtek.com.

 

Static and the Winds of War

The Opposing Force

Weaponry and the delivery systems used today are far more diverse and sophisticated than those used in World War I and World War II.  The battles of these Great Wars, especially on the Western Front during World War I, was more about trench warfare when armies of millions of men faced each other in a line of trenches extending from the Belgian coast through northeastern France to Switzerland. Both opposing sides sitting in a dirty hole in proximity to each other, but with little movement. There was no way around the trenches, and the armor and protective gear worn back then was devastatingly inferior to the equipment used today by the most modern fighting machine in the world; the US Military.

The Static Concept

Static generally refers to stationary. Wikipedia states that in a “static battle” both sides suffer heavy casualties and battle lines move so slowly that the result is “static” – a lack of change.

Who doesn’t remember hearing about the Christmas truce? It was the time of ceasefires along the Western Front at Christmas 1914, when German and British soldiers crossed the trenches to exchange seasonal greetings and chat. They even allowed time to bury their fallen, and in some cases they held joint burial services.

Remember..Reflect..Honor

On this Memorial Day, let us all remember those who have sacrificed on our behalf. For those of us at Static Clean, the word “static” has taken on a new meaning and it will always help us to remember not only our fallen soldiers who fought in the trenches of the Great Wars, but in every conflict that called our military personnel to duty.

The FM Fight Goes On

Tribo-Charging, Who Really Discovered Electricity?

The relationship between static electricity and particle attraction has been long known. The Ancient Greeks when polishing their jade and precious stones noticed that straw, chafe and other particles were attracted to the exact things they were trying to clean, the family jewels. This phenomena became known as “Tribo-charging“. Simply stated it was the contact and friction that generated an electrostatic field around the parts that attracted the debris.

The Plastic Attraction

In the Life Sciences Industry of today most companies use plastics in their process. Whether it is to replace body parts, catheters, injection systems, pumps, blood separators or their packing, plastics are here to stay. Not only are they here to stay, but plastic is being used in this process at an increasing rate. Most of these engineered plastics are for a specific need but the premise is the same, they generate huge amounts of static that causes Foreign Matter (FM) to be attracted to the products and the process.

Medical Device Manufacturers most often individually package each medical device and they are subjected to 100% inspection. When the inspector sees a speck of debris (FM), which could be in the form of plastic bits, fuzz balls from clothing, or even human hair, the package is then ripped open and put aside for repackaging. These units are tracked in what is generally called “the tear down rate”.   In almost every case, the root cause was the forces of static electricity pulling unwanted particles onto the product and the packaging materials. In addition to the packaging level there are various stages in the assembly process where FM causes rejects.   Some of those stages include Injection Molding, Coating, Ultrasonic Welding, Bonding/Gluing, Forming, and handling during the assembly processes.  These are also key functions that need to be addressed. The common denominator being that contact and separation (tribo-charging) occurs, static is generated and FM comes into play to contaminate products that could end up inside the human body or blood stream. The FM could also potentially block injection or fluid systems clogging pathways designed to deliver medicine.

 Gains are Being Made, Reducing FM

The front line of defense is a properly maintained clean room, but that doesn’t address process problems at the local level, aka the workstation or cell. How does static control reduce particles via ionization in the fight to reduce FM? Static Clean did a job last year for a major medical device company that was experiencing a very high tear down rate. They approached us to come up with a system where they could pass their products thru a blow-off, ionized, vacuum table. The results of this first system allowed them to run 50,000 parts without a single tear-down.

While not all medical device manufacturers have identical assembly lines, let’s take a look at the types of static controls are that implemented for specific reasons or points in the process.

Room Ionization: In this installation, ionizers are mounted in the ceilings and the preferred method is to locate the ionizer right under the Fan Filter Unit. (FFU) to take advantage of the clean air being delivered into the room.

Local Ionization: is another method of static control. These ionizers could be in the form of an ionizing air gun or nozzle, static bars, specific ionizing fans at the work bench or a two or three fan overhead ionizing air blower when bench space is at a premium.

The Increasingly popular approach has been to use source capturing methods in conjunction with ionizing air tools. Recent gains have been made in the development of customized medical cleaning workstations that meet clean room protocol and are tailor engineered to a specific product or package.

Cliché Slogans Designed To Keep a Conversation Alive

Stereotyping Our Expressions

People always feel the need to say something when they greet people, so they usually say things like, “it’s a beautiful day”, “they’re calling for rain”, “it’s a bit cloudy” or some other reference to the weather. Let’s face it we all do it.   It seems that every time we watch the news or talk shows, they all say the same old clichés, but the one that seems to be getting most people’s attention and disdain is the over-used and abused, “At the end of the day”.

The Cliche Commonplace

There are more attractive ways to say the same thing, including “when all is said and done”, “the fact of the matter”, and “in the final analysis”.  A friend of mine from Carmel, Indiana was a big Pink Floyd fan who put together a compilation album of their hits and he had a clever title for the CD.  He called it “The Animals Wish You Were Here on the Dark Side of the Wall. It was his way of getting four separate albums under one creative name. If you know the group Pink Floyd, you already know the creative genius behind the band, but you will also recognize the creative liberty that my friend took in coming up with his title.

A Rose by Another Name

When it comes to being creative and trying not to be so cliché, coming up with names for newly developed products, can be as hard as trying to pick a name for a new baby.   Watch for new products from Static Clean in the coming weeks with names like Particle Trap® Mini, Tempest, and the APSC-5 Nozzle. Let’s face it, when all is said and done, at the end of the day, the fact of the matter is that in the final analysis, you can always find something new at www.staticclean.com

FM Isn’t Always the Best Frequency

FM Not Just For Radio

Who doesn’t like FM when it comes to listening to the radio? In the world of music, FM stands for Frequency Modulation, a method of broadcasting electrical signals. In a short blog, it is difficult to fully explain FM, but there are online tutorials and videos that explain how Frequency Modulation works in relationship to the amplitude and phase remaining constant, while the frequency is changed because of the signal input.

In the world of Medical and Pharma Packaging and Processing, FM has a totally different meaning. Foreign Matter (FM) is the cause of contamination, poor yields, rejects, rework and the total recall of products once in the field. The FM can be particles in the form of lint, clothing, skin flakes, hair, and dust.  Another form of foreign matter particles are bits of plastic chips and slivers of angel hair which come from the plastic forming process, especially thermoforming.

The Life Sciences Industry as a whole spends huge sums of money to construct clean rooms that, by design, are supposed to keep foreign matter out of these processes. This assumes that the room is always operating at full efficiency, that humidity and temperature are being controlled, and that everything and everyone that enter the clean rooms are particle-free. That, of course, is not reality, especially if the clean room is not up to semiconductor level protocols, with strict adherence.

 

The Missing Equation

The missing part of this equation is ionization, whether passive or active, room type of systems or local ionization with source capturing abilities. Static electricity by nature not only attracts particles, but holds them securely to any plastic substrate. Plastics have been the widely used in the manufacturing of medical devices and their packaging is almost always some form of plastic that includes bags, pouches and molded trays. When you rub a balloon, you can pin it to the ceiling with static electricity.  When a plastic part of a package generates static by handling, it has the ability to violate the process of keeping the environment Foreign Matter (FM) free.

That reminds me of the bridge in a Steely Dan hit and the line in the song goes like this, “FM –no static at all”.

If you want to reduce foreign matter (FM) and the root cause, “static”, Static Clean can get you to no static at all. Contact our tech sales team today and find out how we can assist you meet your goals.

As the Crow Flies

 

Making a Beeline for the shore

The term “As the Crow Flies” has been found in print since as early as 1758.  The term came from British coastal vessels that customarily carried a cage of crows. Crows detest large expanses of water and when released from a ship, they headed straight for dry land.  This was very useful for sailors at sea who weren’t sure which direction they would find land.  It was their form of radar long before radar was even invented as a standard navigational tool. The lookout perch on ships became known as the crow’s nest and a sailor would sit in the perch and note the direction the crow flew.  Basically the crow instinctively knew the shortest distance between two points.

Clean Room Laminar Air Flow principles are based on the desired plan of air taking the most direct path from entrance to exit and extracting unwanted particles in that airflow to keep the clean room at a stated level of cleanliness.  It has been long known that static electricity can influence the oceans of the world.  Warm water meeting cold water, and each having different densities can create the tides that can even shape our shorelines.

You may ask, “What can influence the air patterns in clean rooms”?  One of the biggest problems is the forces of static electricity which causes particle pull.   Instead of the air taking that beeline or direct path, electro-statically charged plastics pull particles right out of the air flow and they become attracted to the plastic.  If you are in the medical device manufacturing or packaging, these unwanted particles become the cause of poor yield, downtime, rework and lost revenue.   The use of ionization in the air flow assists in delivering ions that reduce static levels on plastic materials.  The ionization also helps to keep particles in the air flow for removal from the clean environment.

There are several key ionization tools that have been designed for use in laminar flow rooms and work stations.  Static Clean offers the DC-ESR bar that mounts easily below a Fan Filter Unit and with its small profile does not obstruct the air pattern.