As the Crow Flies
Making a Beeline for the shore
The term “As the Crow Flies” has been found in print since as early as 1758. The term came from British coastal vessels that customarily carried a cage of crows. Crows detest large expanses of water and when released from a ship, they headed straight for dry land. This was very useful for sailors at sea who weren’t sure which direction they would find land. It was their form of radar long before radar was even invented as a standard navigational tool. The lookout perch on ships became known as the crow’s nest and a sailor would sit in the perch and note the direction the crow flew. Basically the crow instinctively knew the shortest distance between two points.
Clean Room Laminar Air Flow principles are based on the desired plan of air taking the most direct path from entrance to exit and extracting unwanted particles in that airflow to keep the clean room at a stated level of cleanliness. It has been long known that static electricity can influence the oceans of the world. Warm water meeting cold water, and each having different densities can create the tides that can even shape our shorelines.
You may ask, “What can influence the air patterns in clean rooms”? One of the biggest problems is the forces of static electricity which causes particle pull. Instead of the air taking that beeline or direct path, electro-statically charged plastics pull particles right out of the air flow and they become attracted to the plastic. If you are in the medical device manufacturing or packaging, these unwanted particles become the cause of poor yield, downtime, rework and lost revenue. The use of ionization in the air flow assists in delivering ions that reduce static levels on plastic materials. The ionization also helps to keep particles in the air flow for removal from the clean environment.
There are several key ionization tools that have been designed for use in laminar flow rooms and work stations. Static Clean offers the DC-ESR bar that mounts easily below a Fan Filter Unit and with its small profile does not obstruct the air pattern.
