3 Tips for choosing the right lint-free wipes for your laboratory

It is common for laboratories to have innumerable instruments. The high-precision instruments that can be found in research and development (R&D) laboratories and also quality testing labs tend to be expensive. This results in maintenance being given much importance, which is also why large organizations have a separate team taking care of it.

One challenge often faced by the maintenance teams of laboratories is removing the dust off instruments. An ordinary cleaning cloth is what most organizations would use. But, this might not be the right solution for a laboratory having delicate, high-precision measuring instruments. Such instruments can get damaged by the lint that gets released from cleaning cloths. A better alternative, if not the best, are disposable lint-free wipes.

With numerous manufacturers of lint-free wipes, organizations might struggle to identify the best quality disposable wipes. Here are three criteria you can consider before deciding which brand of wipes to buy to keep your laboratory spick and span.

• (i) Lint release (dry particle measured in μm): You would first want to know how much lint the wipes release. The manufacturer should be able to give you statistics on how much dry particle gets released from a single sheet, which is generally represented in terms of μm. This value needs to be at a minimum because lint can wreak havoc in instruments which might even render it inoperative.
• (ii) Thickness (mm/10 plies): The durability of wipes is mainly decided by their thickness. Based on the application and how durable you want it to be, you’d need to check if the wipes would satisfy your requirements. The thickness of lint-free wipes is generally measured in terms of mm per 10 plies.
• (iii) Anti-static property: When the wipes are needed for laboratories dealing with electronic items such as printed circuit boards (PCBs) and mother boards, the anti-static property of the wipes should be evaluated. This is because, in such electronic objects, repeated wiping can build up static energy, and too much of it can result in sparks. This makes it important to use wipes which are as anti-static as possible.

When evaluating lint-free wipes using the above criteria and a few others such as softness and ability to withstand solvents, the PureLeaf ST-280 lint-free wipes are preferred by numerous organizations. These wipes are manufactured in Japan by Ozu Corporation using their proprietary technology.

When compared with all the other competitor products, it has been found that the PureLeaf ST-280 wipes have lesser lint and more thickness. Here’s a report of a comparison experiment that was performed between Ozu Corporation’s PureLeaf ST-280 wipes and a competitor’s wipes which are also used for similar applications: http://agaramindia.com/lint-free-wipes/case-study.pdf