South Bay Chapter
February 2006 Meeting Information

Optically Stimulated Emission for Surface Cleanliness Monitoring - Or: How Clean is "Clean"?

A key to surface finishing is a “properly” prepared surface. Defining and maintaining the surface preparation at “proper” levels is at best subjective. To assure a consistent and meaningful level of surface cleanliness, it is important not only to specify a desirable level of surface cleanliness, but also to specify a method of cleanliness verification. This generally leads to the question, "How clean is 'clean'"?

Speaking on this subject will be Mantosh K. Chawla President and co-founder of Photo Emission Tech., Inc. For the past 20 years he has been involved in the design, manufacture and marketing of Optically Stimulated Electron Emission (OSEE) systems for measuring and monitoring surface cleanliness. During this time he has developed considerable expertise in surface cleaning monitoring and verification techniques including analytical techniques.

The main focus of the presentation will be the principal and applications of the  technique for quantitatively measuring surface cleanliness. Selected OSEE applications will also be presented, such as how OSEE is currently being used on the Solid Rocket Motor (SRM) for the space shuttle to assure proper bonding between the steel casing and its lining, thus ensuring that the space shuttle disaster of 1986 is not repeated.  

We had a similar discussion several years back and it was well received.  If you missed it the last time, you don't want to miss it again.  For reservations please call (805)271-2242 or e-mail your request. We'll be looking forward to seeing you there.

Please note the new day for our meetings.  Due to scheduling conflicts among some of our members, we will be changing our meeting day to the 4th Thursday of each month.  Hopefully we will see more of you at the meetings.