Hi, I’m Stephen Carfaro, President and CEO of C.C. Steven & Associates. I’m excited to share that this marks our 48th year in business, solving static issues across a wide range of industries—including industrial manufacturing, aerospace, semiconductors, electronics, and life sciences. Over nearly five decades, we’ve become trusted experts in static control and mitigation solutions. Today, I want to focus on a critical topic: controlling contamination in medical device and life science manufacturing.

The Challenge of Static in Cleanrooms

In medical device manufacturing, contamination control is vital—especially during critical processes and before final packaging. Electrostatic fields and charges can have a significant impact on plastic parts and cleanroom operations. Even a field as small as 2,000 volts can attract particulate matter to your product. This attraction undermines the effectiveness of your cleanroom’s laminar flow, which is designed to scrub out airborne particles.

If static builds up on plastic parts or medical devices, it overrides the cleanroom’s airflow and draws contaminants directly to the surface of your product. To mitigate this, the goal is to eliminate static charges and maintain a neutral state on your parts, allowing your cleanroom to perform as intended.

The Solutions

We partner with Simco-Ion, a global leader in static mitigation equipment, to provide comprehensive solutions. These include:

1. Ionizing Blowers
2. Ionizing Air Guns
3. Full-Coverage Ionizing Room Systems

By using these tools, you can reduce static fields to below 2,000 volts, eliminating the ability for parts to attract contaminants.

Addressing the Next Question: Where Do the Particles Go?

Once static is mitigated, the next challenge is dealing with the particulate already on the part. Traditional ionizing air guns effectively neutralize the static and blow off particles, but they don’t address where the debris ends up—it often just relocates elsewhere in the cleanroom.

That’s where our Particle Capture System (PCS) comes in. Over the past seven years, we’ve developed solutions that not only eliminate static but also capture particles at the source, preventing them from re-entering the environment. With five different configurations, including:

1. Tabletop models (PCS CLEANSTATION, CLEANSTATION XL, PRO)
2. Under-bench mount models (PCS MUON TRAP/UNDER BENCH MOUNT)
3. Vertical systems (PCS VERTICAL)
4. Full cleanroom tables (PCS CLEANTABLE)
5. Cube systems for batch and large process cleaning (PCS CLEANCUBE)

We can customize a system to meet your needs and ensure your products are clean and contamination-free.

Live Demonstration

Let me walk you through a quick demo of how our system works. To simulate contamination, I’ll use oregano pepper as particulate, an FMX-004 Electrostatic Field Meter, our PCS Muon Trap (under-bench particle capture system), and the Simco-ION Sidekick Ionizing Air Gun.

1. Static Charge Buildup: When contact and separation occur with plastic parts, electrostatic fields can easily exceed 10,000 volts (10 kV). This static charge attracts particulate to the surface of the device.
2. Neutralization and Cleaning: Using an ionizing air gun, I can neutralize the static charge and mechanically remove the particles.
3. Particle Capture: Instead of blowing the particles into the cleanroom, our PCS system captures them at the source, ensuring they are removed from the environment entirely.

The result? A static-free, clean device ready for use or packaging.

Contact Us

If static and contamination are causing yield loss in your manufacturing processes, give us a call at (805) 658-0207. We’d be happy to answer your questions, schedule an onsite visit, and help implement solutions that reduce waste and improve your results.

Here’s to 48 years of innovation—and many more to come!