B1030 Portable Airborne Particle Counter

Six simultaneous channels mean one sample gives the whole size distribution — no sequential re-runs while the cleanroom state changes underneath the measurement.

Use in controlled environments

A large colour touchscreen drives setup and readout at the point of measurement, which suits cleanroom qualification rounds, trouble-shooting excursions after a particle event, and routine monitoring points that a fixed system does not cover.

Buyers in pharmaceutical and electronics cleanrooms usually deploy portables like the B1030 alongside online counters: the fixed points watch continuously, and the portable investigates. The cleanroom monitoring guide on this site walks through that division of labour.

A note on model figures

The B1030, the B110 and the B110-Pro are separate models in this family, each with its own published figures — the B1030's are a 0.1 micrometre minimum particle size and six size channels. If your specification calls for a flow rate or a storage figure, check the B110-Pro page or ask in the inquiry, so the model quoted is the model your requirement describes.

The counting routine in practice

A particle-counting session is choreographed: the room at rest or in operation as the protocol demands, the sampler placed where the work actually happens, tubing kept short and bends gentle because large particles are lost in lazy plumbing. The B1030 counts six size channels at once, down to 0.1 micrometres, so a single sample returns the whole size distribution for the point being measured. Operators should understand what the number is — a count in a volume, with Poisson noise that punishes short samples — and the instrument's stored records let borderline results be reviewed rather than argued from memory.

The touchscreen and multi-format export matter at the audit end of the job: results leave as CSV for spreadsheets, Excel for reports, PDF for the quality file. Classification exercises fail audits on documentation more often than on counts, and a counter that produces its paperwork as it works removes the transcription step where errors breed.

Routine monitoring versus classification

Classification is an event; monitoring is a habit. The same counter serves both, but the programmes differ: classification samples to a standard's grid with pass/fail arithmetic, while routine monitoring trends a few meaningful points frequently and reacts to drift. A facility buying its first counter should decide which programme it is funding — usually monitoring with periodic classification — because the decision sets the accessories: probes and stands for fixed monitoring points, tubing and printers for classification kits.

Sampling plans and the statistics of small numbers

Counts obey Poisson statistics, and Poisson statistics are unkind to small samples: a true concentration at the class limit, sampled briefly, returns zeros and alarms in cheerful alternation. The sampling plan is the countermeasure — volumes sized so the expected count at the limit is a number statistics can judge, locations enough to represent the room, and repeat sampling where a borderline result carries consequences. The B1030's flow rate and stored sampling programmes make the plan executable without arithmetic at the bench: volumes, delays and durations set once in the programme, recalled by name, executed identically by every operator. Programmes, not intentions, are what audits find.

Zero counts deserve their own doctrine: a run of zeros at adequate volume is evidence of a clean room; a zero at trivial volume is evidence of nothing, and reports should carry the sampled volume beside every count so the reader can tell the two apart. Facilities that print volumes on their reports find their arguments with auditors shortening noticeably.

The counter in the gowning mirror

Few instruments give feedback as honest as a particle counter pointed at a gowning bench: operators watch their own technique in the counts — the glove change that sheds, the fast movement that billows, the sanitiser allowed to dry versus wiped early. Trainers who use live counting in gowning qualification turn a compliance ritual into a skill with a visible score, and the room's routine data improves behind the training room's. It is the cheapest yield improvement in many facilities, bought with an instrument they already own and an hour of theatre.

Glossary for particle counting

Cumulative count — the number of particles at or above a size threshold, the form classification limits are written in. Differential count — the number within one size channel, the form process diagnosis prefers. Flow rate — the sampled volume per minute, the denominator of every concentration and the first thing calibration verifies. Coincidence loss — the undercounting that occurs when two particles occupy the sensing volume together and register as one. Zero count test — the filtered-inlet check that proves the counter's background is truly zero before it judges a room. Isokinetic sampling — matching probe inlet velocity to the room's airflow so the sample is unbiased by particle inertia.

At rest — the room state with equipment running and people absent, one of the two states classification is performed in. In operation — the state with the process and its operators present, the other. Alert level — the count that triggers investigation, set inside the class limit from the room's own baseline. Action level — the count that triggers intervention, set between alert and limit. Sample programme — the stored recipe of locations, volumes and delays that makes a session repeatable between operators. Poisson noise — the counting statistics that govern how much air must be sampled before a low count means anything.

Counting in the real room: three habits

Three habits separate real-room counting from laboratory manners. First, sample where the product is, at the height the work happens, in the airflow the product actually meets — not where the socket is. Second, count during the work, with the crew at full stretch, because the room's class at rest is a promise and its behaviour in operation is the fact. Third, write the state on every record — who was present, what was running, which doors cycled — because a count without its context is a riddle for whoever inherits it. The B1030's portability and stored programmes exist to make the three habits cheap; programmes are built from cheap habits and die of expensive ones.

The counter as a maintenance witness

Rooms announce their facilities' health in counts long before they fail classifications: a terminal filter loading, a fan belt slipping, a door closer dying. Monitoring programmes that share their trends with the maintenance team — as information, not accusation — convert the counter into a predictive instrument for the building itself, and the building's reliability work starts paying the monitoring programme's rent. It is the same lesson this catalogue teaches about fixed gas points and flue trends: measurement kept in a silo is evidence; measurement shared is intelligence.

Counting for the first time: a facility's first month

A facility's first month with a counter has a predictable emotional arc: delight at the numbers' immediacy, alarm at what the numbers show about the room's busy hours, argument about whether the probe was in the right place, and then — if the programme is well led — the first quiet week in which gowning improved, a door discipline changed, and the trace visibly settled. Mentors should promise that arc in advance so the alarm phase is read as the instrument working rather than as the room failing. The first month's data, kept whole, becomes the baseline against which the facility's entire cleanroom story is later told, which is a reason to run the month deliberately rather than casually.

Measurement

Minimum particle size

0.1 µm

Channels

6 particle-size channels, counted simultaneously

Interface

Display

Large colour touchscreen

Applications (published)

Industries

AR glass lens manufacture; semiconductor chip manufacture

• Counts particles down to 0.1 µm
• Six size channels in a single sample
• Large colour touchscreen at the point of measurement
• Published for semiconductor and AR lens cleanrooms