Smoke Damage to Electronics
Customer: Fibre optic amplifier manufacturer
Location: Greenwich, London
Instructing Party: UK Loss Adjusting Company
Contamination Profiling
Background:The Customer manufactures fibre optic cable repeater amplifiers for use in undersea environments. The submarine amplifiers are manufactured under clean room conditions at only the incident site. A fire occurred in a wave soldering machine used for circuit board manufacture causing the overhead sprinklers to activate.
Issues:At the time of the fire the clean room was full of work in progress (WIP) in the form of part finished circuit boards. The Customer was concerned that if this WIP was contaminated with soot or corrosive chloride deposits it would have to be scrapped causing significant delays to a major contract.
DFA Activity:DFA were commissioned by the Loss Adjuster acting for the Customer’s Insurer to investigate the extent and severity of any smoke/chloride contamination in the clean room facility and on the WIP. An extensive visual inspection followed by chemical swab analyses, to determine the level of any corrosive chloride contamination produced by burning PVC insulation on electrical cables, was carried out in the clean room and on the WIP. From these activities a detailed contamination map was prepared that revealed the smoke/chloride contamination was very localised around the burnt machine and that the WIP was only affected by very minor soot fallout that could be readily removed.
Benefits of using DFA
DFA were able to demonstrate that the clean room could be easily returned to normal operation and that the WIP could be used as normal thus avoiding significant manufacturing delays.
