Cleanroom Sliding Doors

The use of sliding doors in cleanroom environments has proven to be an effective solution for enhancing efficiency. These specialized doors offer numerous benefits that contribute to maintaining the required cleanliness levels and improving workflow.

Firstly, sliding cleanroom doors ensure a tight seal when closed, preventing any unwanted contaminants from entering the cleanroom. This helps to maintain the integrity of the controlled environment and protect sensitive processes or products from potential contamination.

Sliding doors simply cut through the air causing minimal disturbance in clean room environments, whereas swing doors disrupt the airflow each time they are opened. This uncontrolled air can accelerate the spread of airborne micro-organisms by air currents and may result in cross contamination in clean rooms.

Secondly, sliding cleanroom doors are designed with smooth surfaces and minimal crevices, making them easy to clean and sanitize. This reduces downtime for cleaning procedures and allows for quick restoration of operations.

Additionally, cleanroom sliding doors provide seamless access between different areas within the cleanroom, facilitating smooth flow of personnel and equipment. Their ergonomic design also enhances user comfort and convenience during frequent movements.

Overall, by incorporating sliding doors into cleanroom facilities, organizations can optimize efficiency by minimizing contamination risks, streamlining cleaning processes, and improving overall workflow.

A white cleanroom sliding door.

Sliding Cleanroom Doors:

• Create up to 70% less air disturbance than swing doors
• Reduce the spread of micro-organisms
• Is safer, provides convenient access for high traffic areas
• Generate extra floor space: on average 10-15%
• A better solution for those with limited space
• Eliminate the chance of a door being opened into someone.

Dortek have a range of FRP cleanroom sliding doors and hermetic sliding doors designed specifically for hygienic areas. Our doors are proven to maximise efficiency, safety and cleanability in the most demanding cleanroom environments. Contact us for more information at info@dortek.com.

Meet Our Project Manager, Andy Lowe

Please tell us a bit about yourself!

I have been in East Yorkshire now for 20 years, I moved up North from Somerset. I’m relatively new at Dortek, I started last September, my background prior to Dortek was very much site-based, working in the M&E sector on all commercial projects. A considerable amount of the work involved office fit-out and pharmaceutical warehouses.

 

What first inspired you into the engineering and architectural industry?

From a young age I always liked drawing, the only subject I was good at when I was at school was art and technology, I went on further to study aspects of design at university. I studied interior and landscape, architectural, which I graduated in with a bachelor honour. 

 

As an apprentice I worked within an architectural practice. From then on I knew I had a passion for construction, it was just finding the right sector within the industry. I’m very interested in the way things are put together. Whether it was playing with Lego as a kid or having a passion for buildings and the environments they sit within. Fulfilling my desire to combine creativity with practicality and problem solving, I couldn’t imagine doing anything else at the time, I knew it was the career choice for me. 

 

What made you want to work for Dortek?

I was looking for a new challenge, a new chapter, everyone has personal goals to reach and I had a good feel for Dortek on my initial interview. I felt Dortek was going to push my career forward to where I was aiming to be and what I wanted to achieve. 

 

In my previous employment, for seven years, I worked away from home so having a perfect balance of site and office working now I’m at Dortek is great. 

 

How has COVID affected your role within Dortek?

I think COVID has been very challenging, especially within the construction industry; health and safety for contractors and everyone working on site is a huge factor. For the first couple of months at the company, I was on site shadowing engineers. Installing doors with face coverings or shields can be difficult at times, I found it was no longer the case of just turning up and starting work anymore, you need to be prepared with the testing procedures prior to arriving and on the day of arrival. 

 

Sites are very busy and can be very populated, working through a pandemic you always needed to use you own personal judgment. However, I strongly believe many contractors have developed new methods for delivering projects and ways to keep people communicating effectively whilst working together on a project. 

 

What do you like about working with Dortek?

It’s a very busy atmosphere working on Dortek’s project management team, which I love. I learnt very quickly that every day can be very different, dealing with numerous clients can be challenging yet extremely exciting and rewarding. As much as this opportunity came as a huge learning curve to me, the help and support I received from everyone within the team has been outstanding. Everyone has taken the time in some way to help me grow within the company. You really couldn’t have asked for better colleagues. 

 

What are your interests outside of work?

My two-year-old son keeps me very much on my toes, I follow rugby league, Hull Kingston rovers especially, so finally being able to take my son this year to a few home games will be a proud moment to share with him. I try to keep as active as possible swimming, mountain biking, and the odd game of 5 a-side-football.

Away from sport, me and my partner seem to be passing ships with her career as a nurse so whenever possible we like to get away from home, spending weekends exploring different places like the coast, Lake District and pretty much anywhere that has a good country pub. A few trips abroad are definitely well overdue, which we hope to make this year.

A Little Bit About Us

Dortek have over 50 years of experience in providing specialist door solutions for demanding environments.

We have produced and installed more than 200,000 door sets for clients in over 80 countries. Due to our passion, expertise, dedication, and meticulous planning, we are the chosen supplier to the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical, health, food, retail, and leisure companies.

We have world class manufacturing facilities where we produce an inherently superior product, one that’s more hygienic, intelligent, easy to clean, durable and has a higher quality finish. Our doors are capable of resisting bacteria, water, laser, x-ray and are fire certified in over 30 countries.

We offer you our full support at every stage of the process, from site surveys and manufacturing through to project management, installation, and servicing. The Dortek team are a group of talented and experienced individuals who all share a vision to generate great results for each and every one of our clients.

For more information about us and our services, please get in touch by submitting an enquiry on our contact us page and a member of our team will get back to you.

Two men shaking hands on site.

Cleanroom Doors Inside a Biopharma Facility

We recently installed these Cleanroom Doors inside a Biopharma facility. This door is part of an airlock to a Seed Room with 60pa pressure differential across this door. The door was automated with a system suitable to ensure that the door always closed. Magnetic locks and armature plates were inbuilt flush into the frame door stop and door blade, providing access control and ensuring the doors fully sealed to keep air loss to a minimum.

 

Basic Requirements for Cleanroom Doors

Choosing the correct door system is a major factor in ensuring the delicate balance of a cleanroom. If the doors do not function properly, the cleanroom could fail to meet relevant cleanroom standards and be exposed to a higher risk of contamination. Here are some of the most basic but essential factors to consider when selecting a cleanroom door.

Hygienic & Flush Fitting

It’s vital that doors and frames are completely flush with the wall panels in order to meet compliance standards and be easy to keep clean. The door surface should also be a smooth flat surface that is free from ledges, recesses or anywhere that bacteria or dust particles that can be trapped and grow. Vision panels within the doors should also be completely flush to the door to maintain hygiene. As ISO-1464 44-4 2001 states: “Doors should present as few horizontal ledges as possible with particular attention being paid to the minimisation of steps or ledges.”

Three images of flush cleanroom doors.
Design of hygienic and flush fitting cleanroom doors

Easy to integrate

Door systems which are designed to be compatible to any type of wall system should be chosen. It is essential that the complete door and frame system can be integrated seamlessly to create a flush finish on both sides of the wall. If the door system does not integrate into any wall structure then it can be difficult to change parameters within the facility without the cleanroom door integrity being compromised.

Resistant to cleaning chemicals

Cleanrooms are exposed to intense cleaning every day with a variety of strong chemicals to assure high levels of hygiene. Cleanroom doors, as any other cleanroom surfaces, need to be resistant to the regular usage of any cleaning products and any reaction between the door and the chemicals need to be avoided. Most reputable companies carry out tests to make sure doors resist common cleaning chemicals, Chlorine and VHP (vaporised hydrogen peroxide).

Easy to keep clean

Door surfaces in a cleanroom should be smooth in order to remain impervious to microorganisms. The design of cleanroom doors should be kept as simple as possible, avoiding the use of elements that are difficult to clean like ledges or complex mechanisms. Both sides of the door and frame should be completely flush to the wall, to avoid uneven surfaces which are difficult to keep clean.

Impact resistant and durable

Doors in cleanrooms can be subject to high amounts of traffic and exposure to hazardous chemicals on a daily basis. Selecting the right door solutions can help save time and money over the longer term. Strong, lightweight doors should be chosen to improve durability, ease of maintenance and low lifecycle costs.

Vision panels with safety glazing

In a cleanroom, safety comes first. Therefore, every part of the product should be designed to meet the highest safety requirements. Vision panels in doors should be safety glazing and shatter proof to prevent any risk of glass scattering if the panel breaks.

Dortek Door Fiberglass Systems

A yellow FRP cleanroom door.

Dortek’s range of door sizes and thicknesses are designed to integrate into all cleanroom modular panels. Our unique frame design offers a completely flush finish to any cleanroom wall panel of choice.

Considerable care and quality control goes into every Dortek door blade to ensure the smoothest possible finish. The fiberglass door blade is designed to have no sharp edges or 90-degree angles for ease of cleaning. Our frames are seamless, smooth, with round edges and seamless mitres with no crevice or dirt gathering areas.

We are constantly developing innovations to our product offerings to enhance the hygienic performance of our products. Small, but critical, features including flush fitting frames, recessed hinges, vision panels, lock keeps and receivers have all been continuously re-designed to minimise and eliminate dirt gathering areas in cleanrooms.

Take a look at our cleanroom doors here

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