Mark A. DeSorbo
SAN JOSE, CA—Robert Catone wants the contamination control industry, namely standards organizations, to see the light. The light in the cleanroom, that is.
“Cleanrooms are a terrible place to work,” says Catone, vice president at JJI Lighting Group and general manager for Guth Lighting (St. Louis, MO). “Our bodies need visual stimuli, it makes us feel good. Every place you look in a cleanroom, there is glare. It's bright and stark.”
Furthermore, there have not been any standards or recommended practices drafted for cleanroom lighting, he adds.
 Robert Catone of Guth Lighting says lighting reduces costs by increasing efficiency. |
“It's all about HVAC and particles, and it is time to look at the human in the cleanroom and create a nice environment for them to work,” says Catone, who presented “Cleanroom Lighting: Creating a Standard Practice for a Comfortable Environment,” at CleanRooms West '99 in November.
Guth Lighting was also on the CleanRooms West show floor, sharing a booth with Gordon Cleanroom Products Division (Bossier City, LA). Guth has formed an alliance with Gordon to outfit its wall and ceiling grid systems with lighting for more aesthetically pleasing cleanrooms.
Making a cleanroom more pleasant can be done in a couple of ways, according to Catone, and although it may cost about 15 percent more, the added expense is absorbed because of increased efficiency. Light can be diffused in a manner that cuts down on glare, the greatest problem in a cleanroom, while colors other than white can diminish reflections off walls, floors and ceilings and ultimately soften the environment.
Making a cleanroom more pleasant can be done in a couple of ways, according to Catone, and although it may cost about 15 percent more, the added expense is absorbed because of increased efficiency. Light can be diffused in a manner that cuts down on glare, the greatest problem in a cleanroom, while colors other than white can diminish reflections off walls, floors and ceilings and ultimately soften the environment.
Most cleanrooms, he says, use a sealed lens with inverted prisms in drop ceilings, which tend to generate a great deal of glare, which far exceeds the 0 to 100 visual comfort probability (VCP) scale deemed by the Illuminating Engineering Society. The higher the VCP number, the more comfortable the lighting. A VCP of 70 is considered comfortable, but inverted cleanroom lenses tend to fall in the 40 to 50 range.Sealed louver lighting for drop ceilings, Catone says, pushes the light down, and hikes the VCP to the 80 to 90 range.