Pacamor Kubar Bearings (PKB, USA;5251R9N7) announced it is doubling the size of its Class 10,000 Cleanroom.

Located in Troy, New York, PKB manufactures high-precision miniature and instrument ball bearings for the aerospace, defense, medical, dental, industrial and commercial industries.

The project is driven primarily in response to growing demand from Aerospace OEM and MRO customers.

Vice President, Ed Osta, said: "Customer requests for cleanroom assembled and processed aerospace and medical bearings are on the rise as companies look to eliminate contamination and additional cleaning processes from their final assembly operations. The stringent and comprehensive contamination control methods, along with some of the finest technology in the industry, will meet our customers' cleanliness requirements and help reduce their time to market."

A Class 10,000 cleanroom (ISO 7) allows up to 10,000 particles per cubic foot, with the particles sized greater than or equal to 0.5µm. Up to 70 particles per cubic foot can be larger than 5µm.

More about cleanrooms here (Wikipedia; opens in new window).

Pacamor Kubar's larger cleanroom environment will be equipped for all bearing service, from component inspection to lubrication, specialty inspection processes, secondary operations, assembly, testing, and packaging.

New equipment set for the cleanroom includes a running torque tester, heated vacuum impregnation chamber, lubrication centrifuge, nitrogen gas fill system for packaging, and a number of other specialty instrumentation and production tools. It will also include an automated wash system, more Class 100 laminar flow benches for clean processing, precision gauging and inspection instrumentation.

Beyond particulate control, PKB's cleanroom is carefully temperature and humidity controlled, with contamination measurements taken using particle counters. PKB's current cleanroom exceeds the Class 10,000 levels in order to consistently surpass the 1,000 parts per million rating, and PKB said its Class 100 laminar flow benches regularly report single-digit PPMs.