Three numbers in. Your required operational ISO class, your maximum allowable deposition rate, and your alarm limits out — in seconds, grounded in the standard your sector requires.

Choosing a cleanroom classification is one of the most expensive decisions a manufacturer makes, and it is usually made from caution rather than evidence. Without knowing which particle actually threatens the product — the critical particle size — the safe move is to over-specify: a cleaner class, more air changes, more filtration, higher running cost, every year, forever. CleanroomIQ replaces that caution with a calculation.

What it does

You enter three things about your product and process: the critical particle size, the vulnerable surface area, and the exposure time. CleanroomIQ returns the maximum allowable particle deposition rate, the ISO class that follows from it, and the alarm limits you should set on your monitoring. The logic is based on ISO 14644-17 and calibrated on four decades of contamination-control analysis by Brookhuis and Koos Agricola — so the answer is not a rule of thumb, but a defensible number you can put in front of an auditor.

And if you set your product requirements unrealistically strict, CleanroomIQ shows you the consequences. By trying different inputs, you can find the optimal balance between cleanliness and cost.

Why the critical particle size changes everything

Two products in the same cleanroom can have completely different contamination risks. A particle that ruins one is harmless to the other. The particle size that actually threatens your product — its critical particle size, or "particle killer" — is what determines how clean your environment really needs to be. Get it right and you specify exactly what the product requires. Get it wrong, or skip the question entirely, and you either over-engineer at needless cost or under-protect and lose yield. CleanroomIQ puts that number at the center of the decision, where it belongs.

And once you know it, you can tune the air supply to match — optimizing the cleanroom for the product it actually protects.