[labnetwork] Cleanroom Garments - summary

[Leif Johansen]

Hello Thomas,

At DTU Danchip we use a laundry service. We own our own cleanroom garments. All garments are removed from the gowning area every weekend. The laundry service replaces damaged garments with new ones and invoices us. We receive the discarded garments for control inspection. Sometimes we think that the discarded garments are still worthy of being used in our university cleanroom (e.g. loose thread or very small pinhole). However, the laundry company also delivers to several large pharmaceutical companies, so they follow both ISO 14644 as well as GMP and ISO 13485 (medical devices). They claim it would be too costly to set up a special laundry line just for our purpose.

Every third year the Technical University of Denmark holds a tender on all laundry service to insure that we get the best price/quality .

Best regards,
Leif


From: labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu [mailto:labnetwork-bounces at mtl.mit.edu] On Behalf Of Luciani, Vincent (Fed)
Sent: 18. maj 2017 23:53
To: Fab Network (labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu)
Subject: [labnetwork] Cleanroom Garments - summary

Hello All,

Thanks for all the great responses.  I very briefly summarized them in the table below.

Lab

Solution

Comments

NIST CNST NanoFab

Laundry service

Cycled weekly, significant problem with replacement cost, about 100 sets/week

University of Louisville

Self-laundered

No significant problems

University of Wisconsin

Self-laundered

Owns their garments laundered in their HEPA filtered washer and dryer

University of CA, Berkeley

Tyvek

User replaces their own regularly

Cornell Nanoscale Facility

Laundry service

Had a problem, reduced inspection criteria to control replacement costs

Draper Labs

Laundry service

60 users.  Vendor offered insurance that proved cost effective

University of Delaware

Laundry service

Cycled out every two weeks, also some problems with cost of replacing damaged goods

University of Washington

Laundry service

Had a similar experience to NIST.  Switched vendors and it got better.

UCSB Nanofabrication Facility

Laundry service

Large volume.  Found better, cheaper service from a local small business instead of the big guys

University of Pennsylvania

Laundry service

Suffering similar experience as NIST.  Working with vendor to try to control costs.

MIT Lincoln Laboratory

Laundry service

Switched to Alltex fiber suits.  Just as clean as Gore-Tex

University of Utah

Laundry service

Owns their garments, laundered by contractor every two weeks.



I am not sure what we will do yet as we are trying to negotiate with the vendor.  We reduced to the lowest inspection criteria but are still having problems, for example booties with a piece of tape stuck to them pulled as defective, then it takes them 8 weeks to replace it.
We now require all rejected garments be returned to us for inspection.  We then inspect all discarded garments ourselves in order to train the vendor on what constitutes a defect.  It is a painful process.  Disposable garments are in our future until and if we can find a better solution.


Thanks again,
Vince
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