A breath of fresh air — Clean-room firm thriving after bankruptcy woes

The word "bankruptcy" conjures up a lot of images about a company. It's an albatross that has left many companies relegated to the history books, either unable to emerge from court protection altogether, or if that obstacle was overcome, unable to shake the "bankruptcy" stain enough to keep the business viable.

Daw Technologies LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2003, has emerged as a company that still relies on its longtime technological prowess. But the Salt Lake City-based company is now a leaner enterprise that is enjoying both profitability and growth.

Daw is back to cleaning up in the "clean-room" industry and is branching into a few other endeavors where its technology is a good fit.

"We knew the first years (out of bankruptcy) would be the stabilization years," said Jim Collings, Daw's chief executive officer. "We're just now at the process where we're evolving out of the stabilization period and into what we think will be a significant growth period."

Few people make it inside clean rooms because of the controlled nature of the environment inside. Workers — often clad in white fabric from head to toe, with their faces behind a clear shield — use the rooms when they are involved in research or high-tech, biomedical and pharmaceutical manufacturing when their duties require conditions relatively free of pollutants such as dust and airborne microbes. The movies "Outbreak," "The Andromeda Strain" and "Creepshow" featured clean rooms, as did an Intel Corp. commercial a few years back that had occupants boogying to "Play That Funky Music."

Complicated technology goes into making a clean room, but it's based on a simple thing: air. Keeping air moving means keeping dust and other contaminants away from silicon wafers, microelectronics, pharmaceuticals and various elements that require a pristine environment.

"In this room right here," Collings said in a conference room at the company's Salt Lake headquarters, "you may have a complete air change within the room maybe once or twice an hour, whereas in a clean room, you would have a complete air change, running through the filter system, two or three times a minute."

In some cases, all air in a clean room is exchanged in just a few seconds, with huge air handlers forcing filtered air through the ceiling and down through a perforated floor in a closed system. Positive pressure is maintained inside, meaning air flows out — rather than into — the room when a door is opened. In the most stringent circumstances, at most only a micron of unwanted stuff — about 1/25,000th of an inch, or the puniest speck of dust — can be found in a square-foot area.