Inventor’s Corner

Cleanroom washing machine

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The washing machine can be installed in a controlled environment to launder cleanroom garments. The machine has two opposing sides to prevent airborne particulate contamination that can occur in the laundering process. One side is loading garments into the washing machine and the other is for unloading textiles within a cleanroom. The machine has a chemical dispensing system to deliver detergent, a container to hold the detergent and a receptacle bin.
Patent number: 6,082,149
Date granted: July 4, 2000
Inventor: Robert L. Woods of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Sunnyvale, CA)

Air shower

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The air shower is a room with several outlets that blows clean air on to a person to remove dust particles. It includes a vertical drive unit for moving the outlets up and down to distribute air from head to toe. The air blowing outlets are arranged so that the air shower surrounds the person.
Patent number: 6,095,917
Date granted: August 1, 2000
Inventor: Tomokatsu Utsuki of Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. (Tokyo, Japan)

Garment backpack

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The backpack is used with a protective garment and has a pair of vertical pleats that allows it to expand and hold life support or other equipment worn on the back of a wearer.
Patent number: 6,088,833
Date granted: July 18, 2000
Inventors: Debra Nell Welchel; Vivian Gray; and Alan Edward Wright of Kimberly-Clark Worldwide Inc. (Neenah, WI)

Fume hood

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The low-energy consumption fume hood aims at providing a level of safety while reducing the amount of air exhausted. It works on the principal of providing a low-turbulence air supply in the face of the hood. The airflow displaces the volume in the hood's face without significant mixing between the two volumes and with minimum injection of air from either side of the flow. This airflow provides a protective layer of clean air between the contaminated low-flow fume hood work chamber and the laboratory room. Because this protective layer of air will be free of contaminants, even temporary mixing between the air in the face of the fume hood and room air, which may result from short-term pressure fluctuations or turbulence, will keep contaminants contained. Protection of the face of the hood by airflow with low turbulence intensity largely reduces the need to exhaust large amounts of air from the hood. According to the inventor, it has been shown that exhaust airflow reductions of up to 75 percent are possible without a decrease in the hood's containment performance.
Patent number: 6,089,970
Date granted: July 18, 2000
Inventor: Helmut E. Fuestel of The Regents of the University of California (Oakland, CA)

Drive-checking system

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The system is installed in an air conditioning system within a cleanroom. Fan filter units (FFU) include flow sensors for detecting airflow inside housings and indicate normal and adverse flow conditions. A regulator within the sensor emits a control signal, while an alarm provides warning to indicate adverse flow conditions.
Patent number: 6,093,229
Dated granted: July 25, 2000
Inventors: Kun-Hyung Lee; Jung-sung Hwang; Yo-han Ahn; and Jae-heung Choi of Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (Suwon, Korea)

Send your inventions


Information on the patents highlighted above was obtained through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Inventors who have been granted patents within the last six months for new cleanroom and contamination technology are encouraged to submit them to CleanRooms magazine for publication. Send a brief description of the invention along with a detailed drawing to Mark A. DeSorbo, associate editor, CleanRooms, 98 Spit Brook Road, Nashua, NH 03062, or e-mail at [email protected].

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