We are looking to do in house calibration for particle counters. Does anyone know where I can find the equipment for this type of calibration? Thank you in advance for any help yu can give.:bonk:

Well, let me start with the usual caveat: Are you sure you want to calibrate in-house? Those things are usually fairly involved, if you do the full calibration.

Having said that, you can purchase standards with known particle sizes/volume. You would use that as your standard. I believe there is a parameter you verify using an oscilloscope.

We are looking to do in house calibration for particle counters. Does anyone know where I can find the equipment for this type of calibration? Thank you in advance for any help yu can give.:bonk:

Not sure if this would be helpful to you - got from internet ...

Are you talking about air particulate counter or a liquid particle counter?

Irrespective of this I would say you don't want to be doing this calibration in house, it's a specialist area and a complete pain in the neck.

If the particle counter is being used in a cleanroom for pharma/biotech you may not be able to have it calibrated as many companies will refuse to perform calibration on equipment that may be contaminated by nasty bacteria and the like. If it is being used in a semiconductor cleanroom or similar you won't have any problems.

I'll echo the misgivings others have expressed regarding doing this sort of thing in-house, but you can find a potential source for NIST-traceable standards here (http://208.106.133.230/www.dukescientific.com/pages/pageff10.html?s=978).
No endorsement implied.

For an experienced metrologist they aren't too difficult. A previous poster took the words out of my mouth regarding the Duke Scientific calibrated latex spheres. I explored doing them back during my semiconductor days, as we had about thirty of them we supported, and paid a considerably HUGE sum to have them calibrated.

The ones I was involved with were FAIRLY simple (for a senior metrologist). You needed a near-clean-room environment with which to provide very clean air. You pumped the spheres at a known flow rate, measured a pulse which corresponded to the mean particle size for a few different particles. Then cleaned the lens (had to use special swabs, ultra-clean acetone, and understand the technique to properly clean the VERY sensitive lens).

The other part of particle counter calibration was maintenance. There were quite a few maintenance parts that needed to be routinely replaced.

If you have a well-staffed lab with professional people, near-clean-room environment available, and support quite a few (my wild guess would be at least twenty of them to consider doing yourself), then maybe. Otherwise, I would go with the consensus that they are a strange instrument, and require specialized support items. DEFINITELY consider getting factory training if you want to pursue it.

I would like to thank everyone for the information on this subject! I appreciate the time and help.

The particle counters I will be calibrating are used in the semicondcutor industry. We do have a clean room type environment which we will perform calibrations in.

I have learned allot on this and am sure that there is more to come. In general what I have found to do this type of calibration we will need an AEROSOL GENERATOR (one that was recommended was the ROYCO INSTRUMENTS 256) but I really dont know much about this yet. Does anyone know of any other AEROSOL GENERATORS I could look into?

We would use the ROYCO AEROSOL GENERATOR to introduce the NIST tracable particles into a chamber to read on the IUT.

If anyone is interested I will share the final set up once I have it. Again thanks for the Feedback and Information!

Good luck, and by all means, please repost and let us know how you're doing.

Just as an idea, you could always have a qualified external vendor perform these tests for you on-site. These are individuals who calibrate one type of equipment every day. Thus, they are very knowledgeable on that equipment. They are the best teachers, and many times, watching and talking to them, you realize there's more than meets the eye! :)

Too, you might calibrate several of them, and send them out to a qualified calibration source ( or have someone come on-site and do the same). Have them provide as found/ as left data, then compare it to your in-house setup. It will at least give you peace of mind, and provide some level of validation to your calibration process. You will have to compensate for travel/shipping considerations of course, if you send them out.

Brad, I know it's typo but a 'piece of mind' and 'peace of mind' is very different. :lol: :lol:

Good post, by the way.

Regards.

Hi CALkid, I am actually in the same situation with you right now. I was recommended the PMS particle generator but need to know if it works for all air, liquid and optical counters. I believe there's diff method and procedure and instruments for each category of air, liquid and optical counter. Please correct me if wrong.

You may feel free to contact me at atstech@singnet.com.sg to discuss? I would be more then happy to learn along the way also. Thanks.