Last April I got my hands on the latest generation of the Lighthouse 3016 handheld particle counter and I was very impressed. Lighthouse took most of the features from their larger Solair line of portable particle counters and incorporated them into their handhelds. Among these features is the touch screen interface which is intuitive and packed with features. Some of the new features include the alpha-numeric input for naming sample locations, expanded memory, higher concentration limits and a built in cleanroom calculator that has both ISO classes as well as Fed 209e standards.

After several months of using the 3016 I can’t imagine going back to my old particle counter. If you are not familiar with this unit see our page on the Lighthouse 3016.

I mainly use my particle counter for testing air cleaners to see how well they perform in different real world applications. Here at the BPA headquarters we have a couple enclosed areas that we use for testing purposes. We vary our tests so that they are not biased toward any one technology and we try to emulate the types of environments in which our air cleaners may be used. With my old particle counter, testing would involve a printed test data sheet, which I would carry on a clip board and manually fill in data as I tested.

Testing was tedious as I had to take several samples for each particle size. After each set of samples I would need to switch the unit to the next particle size. This posed several obstacles and made testing take a very long time. One of the problems was sustaining the same level of contamination introduction in the room for the duration of my testing.

Once my testing was completed, I then had to manually input all of the data into an excel spreadsheet. As we test several units, this process is very time consuming.

Well… last year this all changed when I got a Lighthouse 3016!

The Lighthouse 3016 has simplified everything and in doing so improved the accuracy of our testing. I can now test all 6 particle sizes at the same time (along with temperature and relative humidity), all of the data is recorded and I can name each test. I can perform over a half dozen tests in the time it used to take to do one. Once the testing is completed it takes me about 2 minutes to download all of the data and get it into my spreadsheet, which saves me several hours of tedious work, a headache and blurry eyes.

Last week I was talking with Bary Kitchner, former president of the IEST*, and he told me that rumor has it that Lighthouse may be planning to upgrade the touch screen from monochrome to a full color display for the next generation of 3016’s. I hope they will offer a retrofit upgrade for my existing unit, maybe I can talk them into an upgrade when I send it in for my next calibration! I’ll blog more about this in the coming months and let everyone know the exact details.

* The IEST is the Secretariat for Technical Committee 209 of the International Standards Organization (ISO/TC 209), charged with writing an international standard for cleanrooms and associated controlled environments. IEST is also an ANSI-accredited developer of American National Standards. The Institute has also revised such Federal Standards as FED-STD-209, MIL-STD-781, MIL-STD-810, and MIL-STD-1246, and has published significant technical papers and findings in its Journal of the IEST, (formerly the Journal of the Institute of Environmental Sciences) for more than 30 years. Through its Working Groups, IEST formulates and publishes Recommended Practices.