Some manufacturing information about Hexagon
Some Manufacturing Information about Hexagon
By Phil Pressel
Manufacturing and Testing
Every single piece of the Hexagon system, from lenses to housings, to cables to nuts and bolts had to be fabricated or purchased and then put together. Many assemblies had to be tested. We are talking of thousands of parts that made up this camera system. Most of the hardware was obtained from outside the plant. We did the design. Others fabricated the parts and shipped them to us. The glass for the optics was purchased then was cut and polished in-house. An exception was for some of the electronic boxes where outside companies designed and fabricated the circuitry to our specifications. They had the manpower and manufacturing expertise. All parts went through a meticulous quality inspection program and in the case of electronics had to be tested prior to shipment to us.
Most of the mechanical assemblies consisted of hardware that was very sensitive to contamination of any kind, including dust. This included lenses, mirrors, delicate mechanisms and many state of the art ball bearings. These would all require assembly in clean rooms. The very large high bay areas were class 100,000 clean. This meant that the area contained less than 100,000 particles 0.5 microns or larger per cubic foot of air. The smaller assembly areas were class 10,000 and within those areas there were many class 100 laminar flow workbenches. These were used to assemble the many mechanisms and sub-assemblies such as the platen, film drive and looper. The complete mechanical and electrical assembly of these could take up to several months each.
Prior to going into these areas required everyone to first dressing in clean room uniforms, booties, hats, etc. Then entry was done by going through an interlock chamber, i.e. once the entrance door was closed the exit door would not open until the one-minute air shower was completed. The air shower blew off all contamination particles from a person. There were two interlocked entrances. White suits were for those working in the class 10,000 area and blue suits were for those in the high bay. Special sticky mats were stepped on prior to entering these chambers in order to pull off debris from the under-part of shoes or booties. Only fiber free type of paper and pens were permitted in the clean rooms because they would not emit or outgas foreign substances or discard fibers. All incoming parts had to be cleaned with special materials or by ultrasonic cleaning machines, then bagged (some sealed in dry nitrogen) and tagged. If someone needed to touch hardware, they had to wear gloves.
In order to handle large and heavy assemblies or intricate mechanisms, special tools and equipment had to be designed. Some of these had additional impositions placed upon them such as that they were going to be used in a dark room. That was required when loading film and performing certain tests on the heavy and large supply assembly.
Highly skilled mechanical and electrical technicians were the ones who did all of the hands-on labor. Each sub-assembly had a designated manufacturing engineer who worked with the relevant design engineer in instructing or troubleshooting during the assembly and test process.
There were vacuum outlets in all the walls of the clean areas. Large hoses were attached to these and used to clean dust or debris generated during the assembly processes. When epoxy cements needed to be removed a small half inch plastic tube was extended from the vacuum outlets directly to within an inch or two of the epoxy being cut or twisted off and it would immediately suck up the epoxy debris thus preventing it from inadvertently entering the assembly.
