Monthly Archives: July 2016

Particles, particles everywhere! What is a lab to do? Sources of these contaminating specks are many: equipment, room materials, unfiltered air, bacteria and mold, clothing, and (the biggest culprit of all) people. Facilities make heroic efforts to keep the adulterants at bay, but some amount of contaminants will find their way into the controlled space.

Until processes become fully automated, personnel will still need to step into cleanrooms to perform application-specific tasks and service equipment. Best practices guide these workers, but it’s impossible to contain every particle that’s just begging to float around the room or land on surfaces.

Materials get transferred into and out of cleanrooms all the time. The value of pass-through chambers is well-known, and labs count on them for continuity of their workflow and certification status. Without an efficient method of clean movement between rooms of different classifications, some facilities would be out of business.

While personnel can enter and exit the room through designated doorways, it’s not feasible for them to bring samples, supplies, carts and equipment with them. Besides the cleanliness problem of excessive object handling, the donning and doffing of garb would be time-consuming and expensive.

The Value of Pass-Through Chambers

Terra pass-through chambers come in many formats, but some of the basic features are the same. For example, interlocks prevent both doors from being open simultaneously. Why is this important? If both sides of the pass-through are open, contaminated