Cleanroom lockout
During the assembly of atomically precise gem-gum products in advanced gem gum factories many atomically precise interlocking interfaces need to be coupled together. From very very small interfaces in the deep nanoscale up to interfaces big enough to be visible to the human eye. These interfaces may be more or less susceptible to all kinds of dirt. Susceptibility to dirt depends on the size of the interface and the design decisions taken for it. When there's no space at all or too little space for soft or hard dirt and the amount of dirt present is too high then locking building blocks together can potentially fail. Thus the assembly in the lower assembly levels of a gem-gum factory needs to be done in a very clean environment. This is especially essential for the assembly of the smaller crystolecules and likely very beneficial for the assembly of the bigger microcomponents. The bigger the interfaces the more space is available for tolerance for dirt. When the interfaces become big enough even active self cleaning functionalities become an option.
At some stage in the assembly levels rising in size the product can be and also needs to be released into the "real" dirty outside world. This is the cleanroom lockout step.
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When/Where cleanroom lockout is possible
- The earliest point to perform a cleanroom lockout step would be simultaneously with the vacuum lockout step. But postponing this to higher and bigger assembly level steps should be advantageous.
- The latest point to perform a cleanroom lockout step would be at the final macroscopic product size.
Nesting several stages of cleanroom lockout
It's possible to nest several cleanroom lockout steps in stages but this rapidly renders the lower stages to a state of having no real effect. Especially if the biggest level clean room lockout is near excellent (possibly even vacuum lockout quality). This is a chain product of sealing efficiencies all very near one leading to extremely fast exponential falloff of dirt moving back in against the production lockout direction.
The only benefit the lower levels give then is safety for the very rare occurrence of a catastrophic full breach of the upper cleanroom levels. Considering the near indestructible properties of the frame metamaterials of a well designed gem-gum factory such a breach if it occurs is most likely due to intentional attack.
Method for cleanroom lockout
A cleanroom lockout step can be done with methods similar to the ones used in the vacuum lockout step. But perfect tightness against even the smallest gas molecules and atoms like hydrogen and helium is not required. But it's not forbidden either blurring the line between vacuum lockout and cleanroom lockout.
Cleanroom lockin (a necessity for recycling)
Especially for the recycling of products the capability of locking them back in into the cleanroom environment is important. To do that the potentially dirtied products need to be cleaned.
There are many possible methods for cleaning including wet and dry cleaning, cleaning with compressed gasses, electrostatic cleaning, ...
Cleaning agents
Chemicals for wet and dry cleaning could potentially be synthesized within more advanced gem-gum factories.
What could be useful (just a guess) are chemicals found in dry cleaning:
- chlorofluorocarbons CFCs
- silicone oils
- long chain hydrocarbon alcohols?
- super-critical CO2
Also possible would be:
- more aggressive chemicals for more robust building blocks
- highly compressed streams of gasses. Plain air, nitrogen, argon, ...
After usage the cleaning agents need to be cleaned themselves (filtered / distilled / ...). Thermal treatments (like distilling with heat recuperation) work better at the macroscale so this could be a seperate device. But direct integration might be more convenient for small mobile pants pockets sized factories.
Minimizing cleaning by exploiting modularity
Depending on the type of product more or less material needs to be cleaned. Most macroscale products have very little surface area compared to their internal volume. By peeling of just the outermost layer of microcomponents and just washing them the cleaning process can be done very compactly and will avoid the unnecessary work of cleaning clean internal coupling surfaces. This makes it faster and more energy efficient.
A notable exception where pervasive cleaning is necessary are filters. Like air filters for carbon dioxide harvesting and also possibly cleaning filters for the cleaning solvents.
Logging cleaning history
It might be a good idea to log the cleaning history of microcomponents via the microcomponent tagging techniques.
Dealing with dirt after cleanroom lockout and outside the clean room
- Dirt accommodating gaps
- Self cleaning functionalities
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