The need for clean room die cutting is growing rapidly. That’s
because the number of products on the market that require large
production runs in a clean room environment is exploding. In the
medical market alone, new products are being introduced daily,
including items like self-diagnostic test kits, heart monitor
patches, and new types of burn dressings. Clean room die cutting is
ideal for thousands of products like surgical tools, implants, and
packaging for medical supplies, filters for medical machines,
implants, colostomy bags, and transdermal patches of all kinds.
Clean room die cutting isn’t just reserved for medical supplies
like bandages and wound coverings. Die cutting machines can be set up
in a clean room to perform cutting procedures on tissue that formerly
had to be cut by hand, saving a lot of time and money over previous
methods. Clean room die cutting now takes care of things like skin
grafts, collagen, and heart valves. It’s a very versatile way to
handle large amounts of repetitive cutting without a lot of handwork.
This also avoids most of the handling of the tissue material that can
lead to a degradation of its quality. Because dies can be laid out to
cut repetitively in a closely bunched pattern, there is also less
waste than cutting by hand methods.
Clean room die cutting isn’t restricted to the medical sector.
Clean room manufacturing experts like BarilCorp.com
offer flatbed and rotary die cutting services and expertise for
customers working for the military, pharmaceutical, electronic,
homeland security, and other industries that need absolutely clean
environments that retain high-production capabilities.
The Challenges of Clean Room Die Cutting
Die cutting in a clean room poses two big challenges to the
manufacturer. The machine must not contaminate the room that it is
placed in, and it must also not contaminate the material that it
cuts. This makes clean room equipment for die cutting unlike any
other die cutting equipment for any other industry. For most
industries, even food service, die cutters only have to worry about
the ease of cleaning and decontaminating the die cutters and conveyor
that the material touches. In a clean room environment that deals
with sensitive medical manufacturing, the need for cleaning and
disinfecting becomes acute. But beyond that, there needs to be almost
no exposed moving parts on the machine that could possibly introduce
contamination into the air or onto surrounding surfaces.
Manufacturers and designers solve this problem in various ways. The
most common feature of all clean room die cutting machines is an
exterior fashioned from either stainless steel or nickel-coated
carbon steel. These materials have a long track record in hospitals,
laboratories, and operating theaters, and the cleaning supplies for
use on their surfaces are well tested in many settings. Not only are
the exterior surfaces clad in impervious metals, they’re also
fabricated in the smoothest possible shapes in order to avoid any
area that might invite any type of contaminant to build up, or to be
difficult to reach during daily or spot cleaning.
Keeping the Moving Parts Hidden
For flatbed die cutters, there are almost no moving parts visible
anywhere on the machine. The material is placed on a platen, and then
the operator slides it in place under the cutting dies. Controls that
require knobs or other penetrations in the outside shell of the
machine are kept to a minimum. Touchpads are preferred for operating
the machine wherever possible. It’s customary for the machines to
have a limited amount of accessory holders within easy reach of the
operator, and they are manufactured entirely from a type of ABS
plastic that is common in medical settings.
Any clean room die cutting machines operate using pneumatic pumps to
apply the pressure to the platen and the material to be cut. This
will require a substantial air supply, as a typical machine might
bring up to 40 tons of pressure to bear on the work surface. If
possible, designers specify that the air supply for the machines be
generated outside the room, with pneumatic lines in and out.
Hydraulic machines are also available if pneumatic installations are
not practical, but they’re harder to detail for clean room
standards. Air must also be introduced and then exhausted from the
work area to keep the work from spreading any contamination into the
air while it is in operation.
Sightlines Can Be Tricky
Because it’s necessary to keep the operator safe, and the moving
parts of the machinery are inside a substantial housing, sightlines
on the work can be compromised in some cases. Some manufacturers have
responded to this by including a video feed with a camera or cameras
mounted inside the housing. This gives the operator a detailed view
from a vantage point that’s not available anywhere outside the
machine. Results are improved, and the video camera can also be set
up to allow zooming in and out to improve the sightlines further.
This video feed also improves operator safety, as it makes it less
likely that a poor sightline could tempt the operator into placing
their face or hands too close to the moving parts.
To speed up operation, the die cutter can be provided with roller
feeds to make the production of hundreds or thousands of parts per
hour. Because of the close tolerances required for many types of
clean room die cutting operations, precise depth control is very
important, and it’s important for the operator to be able to
continuously monitor the output and make fine adjustments to the
settings on the fly. Depth control is usually calibrated down to
one-thousandth of an inch.
Finely tuned settings aren’t enough to produce precise work on
their own. The machinery itself has to be manufactured to produce
very flat surfaces, and parallelism tolerances have to be very tight,
especially on machines with larger platens that use die cutters in
multiple arrays. It’s also vital that the platen or the die doesn’t
deflect under pressure, so the bearings and trunnions on the machines
are extremely robust.
