Maneuverable Environmental Containment for Aerospace Prototyping with Clean Room Control

Situation

Aerospace and aviation prototyping often involves sensitive processes that can have specific demands requiring clean rooms with precise temperature and humidity controls. However, expensive permanent enclosures aren’t efficient for alternating cellular workflows needed for building components.

What if you had a mobile clean room containment system that you could quickly deploy for alternating cellular workflows anywhere in your facility? In this case study, learn how Duroair™ created a flexible clean room solution to do just that.

The North American R&D facility of a U.S.-based aerospace company builds reusable rockets and designs and manufactures launch vehicles for commercial space yards. Component building processes involve the use of adhesives that will only successfully bond within very specific temperature and humidity ranges that require climate control.

In addition, the bonding process requires a clean environment and must be applied “in-place” at those shop locations where various components are being built. Conventional clean room requirements don’t allow for such a cellular fabricating model, while variable climate control in a fabricating environment is a delicate issue. Due to the intermittent need for the adhesive application function, a conventional clean room would reduce the usable existing floor space of the production facility.

The facility needed a flexible, portable solution for maximizing facility floor space for prototyping components in multiple areas of the shop.

Solution

Duroair developed a unique, climate-controlled clean room solution, combining our flexible enclosure, DuroRoom™, with a portable, DuroClean™ indoor air purification system equipped with a tier-sourced, climate control unit.

This portable containment system delivers both a Class 100,000 (ISO8) clean room environment plus required temperature and humidity control. The flexible DuroRoom enclosure retracts to 20% of the extended length when not in use, making it ideal for on-demand prototyping workflows.

Maneuverable Clean Room Containment Offers Benefits

Duroair modular clean rooms can be placed anywhere in a manufacturing facility without having to install a permanent hardwall solution. This offers numerous time-saving benefits while safeguarding personnel and processes.

Benefits include:

• Increased workflow efficiency and maximized floor space for stop-and-start R&D processes.
• Reduced material handling by not having to transport large workpieces to a dedicated clean air space.
• Laminar or turbulent airflow as required.
• Unsurpassed control of isolated work environments, including pressure (positive or negative), humidity, temperature/air flow patterns, and harmful dust particulates and gaseous contaminants.

Results

Maximized Floor Space & Reduced Installation Costs for Clean Room Containment

This retractable, portable containment solution is more affordable than a permanent clean room space with conventional requirements, and it can be placed anywhere in the R&D facility.

The results? Efficient material flow is accomplished by maneuvering the retracted Duroair clean room to the component, after which the enclosure is extended around the component prior to the adhesive application. Temperature and humidity are efficiently and cost-effectively controlled, while particulate and HEPA filters provide the required air quality. The use of existing floor space is maximized, and no extra equipment and installation costs are added.

Let Duroair Design a Containment Solution for Your R&D Processes

How do you balance a large mix of R&D workflows, such as sanding, painting, and other surface prep, without taking up valuable floor space and inhibiting cellular maneuverability? Containment flexibility and portability are the answer.

Duroair’s portable, retractable enclosures with non-vented air filtration can be engineered for large or small self-contained work environments, wherever and whenever needed — while meeting your specific clean room requirements.

Contact our industrial clean air experts today for a free consultation on how we can create the most flexible solution possible to create on-demand environmental containment while staying within your floor plan and space limitations.