How to Improve Your Fabrication Shop with a Portable Clean Room Enclosure

Fabricators working at various stages in the supply chain, from contract brazers to top-tier aerospace suppliers, need portable clean room enclosures that can help them manage the processes they use to create their products — as well as improve the efficiency of their shops.

For operations that have to be performed in controlled atmospheres, not having a clean room is simply unacceptable. In the absence of one, there has historically been a choice between two alternatives: turn one’s entire facility into a clean room (which is often simply unfeasible) or section off a portion of one’s plant as a dedicated clean room environment.

The latter approach — the more realistic option for most — opens up production to significant risks. For one, there is the obvious potential for damaging products as they are moved to and from the clean room environment. Second, the material handling process is time consuming and those additional hours have to be factored into any production timeline — and budget.

A portable clean room enclosure can eliminate both of these risks, allowing a fabricator to establish a controlled environment in the location where the rest of the production work happens, eliminating the need for potentially damaging material handling processes and removing the time and expense spent moving material to and from a fixed clean-room work area.

In addition to these key benefits provided by a portable clean room enclosure, there are also a couple of secondary ones that can result in cost and time savings, as well as simple convenience, if they are deployed in the right setting.

4 Benefits of a Portable Clean Room Enclosure

As mentioned above, the main benefits of a portable clean room enclosure is that it can eliminate the need to move parts and assemblies. Bringing the clean room to the products reduces the risk of damage to work pieces during material handling and also speeds up production.

In the process, a portable clean room enclosure also eliminates many of the costs associated with material handling, which, depending on the type of fabrication (e.g., industrial work involving larger work pieces that require overhead cranes), can add up.

A portable clean room enclosure can also be a game changer for constrained or modular shop environments that need the flexibility of being able to put floor space to multiple uses.

1. Preventing Damage to Work Pieces

If your shop has a specific area that has been cordoned off as a clean room and you transfer parts and/or assemblies there during different stages in production, there are multiple opportunities for those products to be damaged as they are subjected to handling operations, unloading, loading, and then transfer to the next work station.

In contrast, a production process involving a portable clean room enclosure simply brings the enclosure to the work pieces and sets it up around them, eliminating all the steps that subject them to potential damage.

Find out how much Duroair’s portable clean room enclosure can reduce your damage and rework costs.

2. Winning Back Lost Time

Transferring parts and assemblies takes time. Even the most efficient operations will be painfully aware of how long it takes to get products from Point A to Point B and so forth.

The setup time for a portable clean room enclosure will undoubtedly be faster than 99% of all fabricators’ material handling processes. And in many cases — certainly those involving large work pieces that require overhead cranes, gantry cranes, and forklifts — the time difference can affect lead times in significant ways.

Discover how much Duroair’s portable clean room enclosure can reduce your lead time.

3. Downsizing Material Handling Costs

A portable clean room enclosure can eliminate the need for expensive equipment such as overhead cranes or conveyors outright. But if those systems serve other purposes in your shop as well, a portable clean room can reduce the need to use them as frequently and, by extension, reduce — or eliminate — the operating and labor costs associated with any material handling process.

Learn how much Duroair’s portable clean room enclosure can downsize your material handling costs.

4. Saving Floor Space

Whereas a permanent clean room will occupy space 24/7, regardless of whether or not it is being used, a portable clean room enclosure can be stored elsewhere when not in use and potentially tucked away in a much smaller space (Duroair’s retractable enclosures, for instance, fold up to 20% of their extended size).

This flexibility makes precious floor space available for other uses when the portable clean room enclosure is not in use, providing a solution for small plants that simply don’t have the room for a permanent installation, as well as for modular fabrication settings that retrofit a work area for multiple uses.

Ask us how much floor space Duroair’s portable clean room enclosures can free up for you.

Portable Clean Room Solutions

A portable clean room enclosure is an ideal solution for fabricators that need controlled environments for fragile work pieces that are vulnerable to damage during material handing.

They also have the potential to provide advantages to shops that perform clean room production and are looking to improve their lead times, reduced their material handling costs, and/or increase their flexibility when it comes to shop floor usage.

To explore the tangible business advantages of portable clean room enclosures further, please request a consultation with one of Duroair’s clean air experts.