At the premises of VDL-ETG in Almelo our engineers succefully completed the construction of yet another modular softwall cleanroom. The floor area of this large cleanroom is more than 675m² and is connected by means of a corridor to the already existing cleanrooms. The entire project, consisting of Phase x1, x2, x3, now covers almost 1700m² of floor space, completely made up of modular softwall cleanroom. More detailed information about phase x1 and x2 in the case study.
The entire floor area of the softwall cleanrooms spreads across three interconnected manufacturing halls. The cleanroom will be utilized for the clean assembly and testing of large size high tech semiconductor modules. This cleanroom is also equipped with modern fan filters, which are very energy efficient and generate a minimal heat load. The fan filter units ensure optimum airflow within the cleanroom which resulted in an ISO class 5 validation in the as-built state! When fully furnished and operational a very clean working environment (better than ISO class 7) will be achieved with ease.
The airflow in each zone can be individually adjusted to the desired speed. Larger objects such as furniture and tooling in the cleanroom can affect the airflow. In order to obtain a good flushing of the cleanroomroom and thus to remove the particles that are released during the cleaning process as much as possible, the laminar air flow from the fan filter units is set at the recommended air speed of 0.45 m/s (meters per second) on average. +/-20%.
Validation interval
According to ISO14644-1:2015, cleanroom and flow cabinet have to be validated in accordance with a maintenance and validation programme tailored to the individual process. In practice, this usually leads to a validation interval of 12 months of cleanrooms with ISO class 6 or higher. For cleanrooms or flow cabinets with ISO class 5 or lower, the validation interval is usually 6 months.
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