Particle Fall Out Monitoring
Effective contamination control is essential for the success of many high-tech manufacturing, assembly and operational environments because the presence of contamination can have severe detrimental impacts on the products being manufactured and the processes involved. Particulate contamination can cause a number of issues including component failure, adverse changes in optical properties (related to surface obscuration, absorption and emittance changes, light scattering etc...), noise on electrical contacts, short circuits and mechanical damage to name but a few. For particles below 5 microns in size airborne monitoring is commonly performed but particles greater than 5 microns in size typically fall out onto surfaces and so airborne monitoring is often complimented by particle fallout (PFO) monitoring.
XCAM's Particle Fall Out Monitoring (PFO) products, developed initially as part of the European Space Agency (ESA) Technlogy Development Element (TDE) programme, are an innovative source of real-time PFO data utilising digital imaging technology enabling the autonomous monitoring of PFO in a multitude of environments and applications. This family of products includes:
These products feature in a number of publications:
Holland, Andrew; Burgon, Ross; Holland, Karen; Rampini, Riccardo; Rodriguez Castillo, Sarah and Aranda, Denisse (2022). Testing in Preparation for Space Launch of a Real Time Particle Fall Out (PFO) Monitoring Instrument. In: Proc. of the International Symposium on Contamination Control 2022, Antalya, 11-13 October 2022.
Burgon, Ross; Holland, Karen; Holland, Andrew; Rodriguez Castillo, Sarah and Rampini, Riccardo (2022). Development of a Real Time Particle Fall Out (PFO) Monitoring Instrument for Space Launch Applications. In: Proc. of the International Symposium on Contamination Control 2022, Antalya, 11-13 October 2022.
Holland, Andrew; Shaylor, Abigail; Holland, Karen; Colebrook, David; Lloro Boada, Ivan and Rampini, Riccardo (2018). The PFO1000 Monitor: A Real-time, In-situ, Automated Instrument for Monitoring Particulate Fall-out in Clean Environments. In: Proc. of the International Symposium on Contamination Control 2018, The Hague, 23-26 September 2018.