Diversified Plastics Expands Service Offerings with New Clean Room

“Adding a clean room facility was in our long-term plans; however, a medical device industry customer had an immediate production need, therefore we accelerated our installation plans”, says Annette Lund, vice president. Diversified Plastics is now equipped to assemble, sonic weld, and package parts all in a clean environment. In addition, they will inventory and deliver the customer’s product as needed. “This gives us a big competitive advantage by offering these value-added services for our customers,” says Joe Bourgeault, quality director. “Now our customers make only one stop to have their products molded, assembled, packaged and inventoried”.

Clean room facilities are not commonly found at plastics injection molders. The Diversified Plastics clean room is certified to ISO 14644-1 class 8 standards, which means the filtered air in the clean room contains no more than 100,000 particles larger than one-half (0.5) micron in size per cubic foot of air. A micron is one millionth of a meter, and for comparison, the human hair averages about 75 microns in diameter. The room has positive pressure airflow, which forces contaminants outward when the clean room door is opened. Before entering the clean room environment, workers must enter a changing room to clothe in special apparel such as smocks, shoe coverings, and hairnets. Before any production begins, all work surfaces are wiped down completely. To ensure their strict level of cleanliness is maintained, Diversified Plastics continually monitors the room’s particle count.