ENDICOTT-In a dust-free atmosphere that would be the envy of every cleanliness-obsessed mother, employees of International Flex Technologies manufacture sensitive electronics.

“One particle in the circuitry makes a defect,” says Frank Marconi, an engineer with International Flex.

Dust particles can land on electronic circuits and render them inoperable, so cleanrooms are a necessity throughout the cluster of high-tech manufacturing companies around Binghamton.

The company uses three separate cleanrooms in its Endicott plant. Marconi says International Flex may upgrade the rooms to an even cleaner version as the technology used in the circuitry manufacturing process advances.

Before entering the cleanroom, the employees suit up in protective clothing and go through a pre-cleaning. The protective suits cover cleanroom employees from head to toe in order to keep particles from being introduced into the air. The room is also cleaned daily with dustfree tools and a central vacuum system, says Marconi.

Many other Upstate companies, including Coming, General Electric, Xerox, and Kodak, use cleanrooms in their manufacturing processes, according, to Larry Wetzel, chairman of cleanroom, Systems, Inc., a Syracuse-based manufacturer of cleanroom, air conditioners.

The need for cleanroom equipment will grow with electronics manufacturing, predicts Wetzel.

The electronics industry overall, says Wetzel, is responsible for a surge in cleanroom equipment sales across the nation. Orders for equipment have been strong for about the past 18 months, he adds.

As circuitry becomes smaller and more complex, says Wetzel, electronics companies will have to do more to protect their products from dust during manufacturing. He predicts that humans eventually will have no place inside the cleanroom. Individual pieces of equipment will be enclosed in miniature cleanrooms and the equipment will be operated remotely to eliminate the chance of dust contamination.

Companies already have been creating smaller cleanrooms dedicated to individual processes, in a shift from a centralized cleanroom, for the entire facility, says Wetzel.