Vibrations: Vibration Building Design for Cancer Center Part 3

Hello, everyone. It's Daniel Littwin, the voice of b two b, and welcome to another episode of Vibrations, a TMC podcast. If you're tuning in with us today, this is actually part three of a three part conversation that we've been having with Ahmad Bayat and Mike Georgialis. Ahmad with VACC and Mike Georgialis with TMC. Now we've been exploring a case study in the life sciences industry and really validating why the various industries that we serve need vibration control assistance, technology, and strategies. So if you missed part one and two, probably give this a pause, go listen to those, and then jump into today's episode. To do so, make sure you're heading to tech m f g dot com. You'll find our episodes there along with more supporting content, including the full case study in written form that we're gonna be finalizing our exploration of today. You can also subscribe to Vibrations on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Make sure you hit that subscribe button, and you'll get notifications for future episodes, but you'll also find parts one and two of this conversation on said platforms. So again, the whole purpose of this episode has really been to highlight one very specific case study, the development of a new cancer research center and the challenges that it faced with environmental vibration to showcase how important vibration isolation and control solutions are for success in life sciences and other research intensive industries. So with this final episode, we're gonna be leaving you with some perspective on why collaboration between partners like TMC and VACC is so needed to create a complete solution for our clients. And of course, we're gonna leave you with some strategies that you can implement to assess your vibrational challenges and start coming up with your own solution, but, you know, with a little help, of course. So let's go ahead and wrap up the conversation with Ahmad and Mike. Let's jump in. What I wanna hear is a little more about how each, I guess, aspect of your individual company's work informed the other. Right? Because knowing that this was going to be a multilayered solution means that the granular tech had to have the building design in mind and the building design had to have, you know, what the granular tech was going to solve for it as well, right? So could each of you kind of comment on how the other company's role and how your other guests work on the podcast here, how that influenced your work, right? So we'll start with Mike. Could you tell me a little bit about how the building design component influenced how you and your team approached the TMC level isolation technology? Well, it's all about data. It's all about knowing what to expect and having good measurements. And sometimes you don't know what to expect. Ahmad built a building and he took measurements of the environment before. And after the building was built measurements were taken after inside the building. And we were able to access all this data and see these levels of vibration that were there for us to work with. And so you have your data and your vibration levels that are in your environment but you also have the requirements of the instrument. So on the other end, we work with the end user to get the requirements of the instrument and figure out, well, how low do the vibration levels need to be in order for this instrument to function at its optimum level. And so you have these two pieces, you have this environment that you have and you have a level of vibration that you need to meet. And we at TMC look up these numbers and we develop and design products that are capable of taking that input and generating the desired output. It's called the transfer function of our systems. So we have transfer function, we have a known performance level, we have the ability to increase that performance and decrease that performance as needed, But a lot of cases, standard performance is enough to get that input levels to the output levels that are needed. And so working with Ahmad and the end users, it's all about knowing that data, knowing those levels and knowing what the requirements are and being able to have the confidence in the engineering knowledge behind our system to say, yep, with these levels of input, we can provide these levels of output. And that's a thing that's really important for TMC to be able to do is to be able to promise a performance level that can get you into spec. Yeah, I'd like to follow-up on that because part of right now the problem still, I'm sure it is the audience's mind, is that what I just discussed about this isolated island sitting on close to sixty piles, there's a lot of questions still over that. And in fact, would clarify how TMC's solution was integral to our problem solving. Usually, when we are designing a facility, we design it, it's all done, and then the tool users, the scientists, they are the ones that end up bringing TMC into their site. So this is an example where imagine during concept design, I was presenting to the owners of this facility about my solution where it included active isolation. So the part of the thing here that I need to explain is that, so my isolated island, basically, imagine I took a two thousand environment, brought it down to two hundred in vertical direction, but I created a horizontal resonator. Imagine you have ten million pounds of mass sitting on fifty seven piles that are about one hundred feet tall. When you do the math and the calculation just using mass spring system, you'll quickly realize that we have a two point five Hertz resonator. Okay, so two point five resonator, it's massive. It's really, this is no joke because how do you deal with that? Now how do you restrain that? And how do you put a TMC, let's say, isolation system that can actively even deal with that, because when you push down, usually the isolators or the active or passive isolation tables, they basically have their own natural frequency. Passive system could be two hertz, four hertz, five hertz. Active system, they go below one hertz. But nevertheless, they basically, beyond their resonant frequency, at some point, they start canceling and reducing. So imagine the challenge was now is that I have created within my island a two point five hertz horizontal resonator, And it was, I think, if I recall, it was resonating around six hundred, seven hundred microinch per second. So in a way, I had solved my vertical problem somewhat, but had created a little bit of horizontal problem at two point five So I had to basically go back to drawing board and create literally restrainting of this horizontal mode. So we had to introduce forty really large clevises. You know, these clevises are the type that you don't see really in a normal industry. You see it maybe by loading dock of a large ship or some really big industrial facility where they have to dial in a lot of loads, carry a lot of load. They use these really huge clevises. And so basically our solution was to bring these clevises and horizontally, literally tie my island to the surrounding soil, such that that tying back does not bring in new vibration from the surrounding soil that I isolated. So I built a trench, eighteen inches wide, all around my island, and then now I'm restraining it back to the surrounding environment. So it's kind of a challenging situation. So what we basically that brought us, where we were able to stabilize that horizontal motion that was happening at two point five hertz. But the big part for me right then, I realized that the only thing that would be able to deal with two point five hertz resonance that is still there, it's not like you're a limiter, I just stabilized it literally. I brought that six hundred down a bit in that stable situation. It was really an active system. Part of this also discussion that we haven't talked about is that we kind of were lucky that we had a tool that is highly sophisticated, but yet the isolation system internal to those tools, the cryo, were very primitive. They were passive systems, literally just air springs, passive systems that were resonating around four and five hertz. So imagine if I brought that tool and installed it on my lab floor, not only it wouldn't do anything at the two point five hertz, it would actually be amplifying around four, five hertz. That was no good, basically. So it was basically an outdated technology. It was another opportunity for us to do away with that and bring in a state of the art technology, which is the active system, that really pushes their resonance into zero point one and zero point two hertz, and they begin really canceling and attenuating vibration not only at the two point five hertz, even below that. And that's huge. You know, people don't realize that those frequencies are not something that we can forgive or forget and ignore. They are as important for us to isolate. And so imagine when you build a TMC solution into my structural solution, TMC is bringing in and start working for me at anywhere from, you know, zero point five, very low frequencies, below one hertz, all the way to the higher frequencies. So and that is really where at the heart of our solution, that it really created this final solution. And so basically I had to bring this up to the client very early. I think I remember I was doing a presentation on a weekly basis in Portland and I basically this was my layout that this is how it's going to be solved and buying getting the clients buy in for additional expenditure because these were not a solution that did not cost, but a solution that made the problem, you know, solve the problem. And so, you know, TMC's solution needed as part of the design of the facility. And that opportunity had to be, you know, we had to get this thing, you know, accepted by the client that this is how we are going to solve this problem, and that was the ending. Yeah, and I really like, Ahmad, how you touched on the internal vibration isolation systems to the instrument, the air isolators inside microscope. That's actually a very important part of any vibration cancellation sort of plan. If you're going to go with any vibration cancellation system, especially an active system, it's absolutely critical that that system is compatible with the isolators that are inside what it's built to support. So a lot of these types of instruments, the transmission electron microscopes, the cryo TEMs, the NMRs, any kind of semiconductor manufacturing tools, a lot of different types of microscopes, focused ion beam tools, lithography tools, things like that. They all have their own internal isolation systems and the vast majority of these isolation systems are the types that Ahmad had mentioned, the air isolators, pneumatic isolators that are going to be resonating at two, three, four, five hertz. And if you're going to put that on an active cancellation system, it's absolutely critical that that active cancellation system is complimentary to that system. It doesn't fight that system, it doesn't couple with that system, it doesn't have resonances within those ranges. And that's one thing that's very unique about the TMC active cancellation systems is that we are compatible and we're designed to be complimentary with vibration cancellation systems that are already inside a lot of these instruments. All right, y'all, we're gonna go ahead and start to wrap up the podcast. I appreciate all the insights on the specifics of the case study. Hopefully, audience drew some great insights from that on how to address the situation, how to do proper research, you know, specifically around soil vibration, floor vibration, understanding the surrounding environment, and then applying that into a multi tiered approach, right, where you both solve building vibration as well as the more granular vibration of the research tool itself. But, again, if folks want the more detailed analysis here where you can really read top to bottom the full scale of the research, you can head to our website, tech m f g dot com slash learning. You can also find the link in the podcast description below. What I wanna go ahead and do now, Ahmad and Michael, to close out the podcast is turn this case study into some actionable tips for our audience. So what would you say life science researchers should take away from what worked for solving the Cancer Research Project's vibration issues as other researchers out there look to improve their own resistance to floor vibrations, whether that's through a new building, new technology, you know, a new understanding of their ecosystem, etcetera. So again, what should life science researchers take away from what worked for this case study and why? Yeah, so my concluding remarks would be is that obviously, they are pushing down in terms of demanding from the environment. So a lot of scientists do realise that they need to find a good environment. A lot of the research and development happens within university studies and universities are sitting in urban settings. So there's a lot of activities that impacts. So it's always, you know, the very first thing that every researcher would want to do is find a good spot, a quiet spot to start with, because your starting point is where realize what else you need to do beyond that. And it is a challenging problem and it is becoming challenging. But in my opinion, there are technologies. We are all becoming smarter and finding better solutions to what we have and to deal with these challenging problems. But, you know, otherwise, you know, it is the nature of the problem. Miniaturization and micro nanoscale demands these type of, view of the problem and more like Michael mentioned, kind of divide and conquer. Start with a good site and look at your opportunities within your facility to do better in your design. Yeah, and I add to that that as a word of advice, planning I think is probably the most important thing that anyone can do. They, at this customer, this client, they did a good job of engaging experts like Aman and engaging experts like TMC knowing that they were going to need vibration, some sort of vibration control. So you've always got to plan ahead and don't take for granted the fact that if you don't need vibration control now, you might need it in the future. Environments are extremely dynamic. One day construction could go up next to your super quiet building and all of a sudden you have a vibration problem that you never had before. So I think these instruments like the cryo electron microscopes and many others, they're extremely expensive and extremely complex to install. And the last thing you want to do is encounter a vibration problem that you didn't plan for and then have to go and renovate your facility, move out the tool and start to put in some sort of mitigation approach a couple of years after you've already moved the tool and this could set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not more, not to mention all the lost research time. So I think planning is very, very important. Expect the unexpected. It's very common for vibration to show up when a couple of years after, even though they might not have been there in the beginning, but also you might start to do research, your research limits are going be pushing the envelope. So you might be doing a nanometer and several nanometer level research today and vibration might not be a problem, but your field is going to advance, your instruments are going to get, need to go into higher levels of sensitivity. And so as time goes on, if you didn't have a vibration problem today, then just the work that you're doing, might make a vibration a problem even though maybe the vibration level stayed the same. So it's something that's sort of always coming at you. And I would say, plan and be conservative, and, work with companies like TMC and like a VACC to understand, you know, not only what you need now, but also what you might need in the future. And then my last question for y'all is, you know, also kind of a concluding remark here, but it's a little more focused on projects that are having to start from the ground up. So this can be for really any of your clients, not just life sciences, but when building a new lab or research facility, where do you recommend that research professionals, facility managers and construction professionals start to line up their needs accurately and effectively to center vibration control at the very beginning of the process, right? What are some of your tips for just getting all those ducks in a row early? Yeah, sort of facilities, often they do recognize that they do have this vibration is big part of the design. And, you know, if I tell you that when you're looking at micro and nano vibration design of facilities, basically the entire structural foundation system is actually controlled by micro vibration design. Often, structural engineers designing the same building for, let's say, earthquake in California or some other structural loads, But my experience has been that in the demanding setting, the entire facility's design is controlled by microvibrations. So that means the ownership, they need to have this at the beginning from the site selection characterizing the environment, understanding, like Mike says, not only the environment today, but the environment future, and bringing all that into the design such that you go through the design and your facility we didn't even talk about the facility sources, but as Michael says, if you look at a semiconductor, for example, they have a lot of mechanical energy that has to be powering and allowing for the operation of those kind of facilities. Well, they are actually vibration sources. So often these facilities, they are complex, even in an R and D setting, you're always balancing between sources of vibration in the facility, sources of vibration in the environment, and then your sensitive receptors, which are these instruments. And that all requires really from beginning and site selection all the way through the design and meticulously controlling every step of the design and even construction. You know, a lot of times we design and when we go back to construction and inspection of construction, we find issues. So it's a well thought and well planned execution to make these projects, these sort of facilities successful, and you have to be aware of all of that, and that's really a lot of these R and D facilities and university folks, they are experienced and they understand and recognize that, and they incorporate that into their design and construction. I also think one of the challenges that occurs when you're setting out on a facility design is you might not necessarily know at the time you're designing the facility what instruments you're going to be using. You might have a general idea, but, but you don't necessarily have an idea of the specific ones. It gives it that makes it difficult, in a in a in a planning stages and in the design stages to really have a design spec for the level of vibration that you need to shoot to. So, we try to understand what those tool sets are and what those vibration needs are as early as possible. And sometimes you get lucky and you know exactly what instruments are coming in and you can get the specs for those tools and start to design towards that. But sometimes it's a little more vague and you've got a facility that might be used for a number of different operations and you've kind of think about, well, what's the level of vibration that I should shoot for if I'm bringing in a bunch of unknown tools? And the most conservative route is as low as possible, But sometimes that's a little bit overkill and a good reference of the VC curves. You can look at the vibration criteria curves which were published by Colin and Gordon and you can look at those and see, well, what type of operations am I doing and what's appropriate vibration level for those types of operations. Another resource that you could go to is other folks in your industry that you're working with, which I think is a very, very common way that stakeholders get information about how to plan for vibration control. They look at their colleagues that are doing similar projects, may have new buildings or old buildings or renovated buildings, but they might be using similar tools and they just talk to each other and say, well, what have you done for vibration control? So I think that those references and that communication among stakeholders in this type of project is also very important. And I think on that note, team, we'll go ahead and wrap up. Hopefully our audience can take some of those actionable tips and apply them to their future projects and updates and upgrades to their existing vibration control techniques and ecosystem. But till then, let's go ahead and call it. Folks, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. To our two guests, thank you for your perspective and your insight and wisdom and for getting granular with that case study. Definitely a lot to unpack. And again, we do have a more detailed case study in written form that you can access. So I'll point our folks to that in the description below. They can also go to our white papers section in our learning section of our website. You can find that again at tech m f g dot com slash learning. And, again, I wanna thank our two guests. First, we had Ahmad Bayat, president of Vibro Acoustic Consultants, and we were also joined by Mike Georgialis, North American sales manager for TMC. Ahmad, if folks wanna find out more about VACC's work, maybe get in contact for some more thought leadership or advice, consultation on a new project, how can they do so? Well, our website is www.va consult dot com. And so we've been around for twenty plus years, you know, in this, you know, design space, and so with Google right now, it's easy to locate and our direct phone number is four one five six nine three zero four two four. Yeah, if anybody has any questions, I would be more than happy to entertain their questions. I think my concluding remark is that this is, we have an amazing field I really enjoy because it is a, no problem is the same. Every time, you know, I mean, even semiconductor factories, like Michael was saying, as much as they are predictable where we know what it is, I was just dealing with a problem that one of the tools has created for the customer. And so we are like now, the facility is running, we have to look back and analyze. So this is a very dynamic environment and problem, and we all appreciate that we are able to solve those kinds of problems for our customers. And then, Mike, if folks want to contact you for any specific advice or just to get in touch about maybe locking in a TMC product, how can they do so? Yeah, they can visit our website. We have contact forms on the website, techmfg dot com. They can also email me directly, mike, m I k e dot georgales, g e o r g a l I s, at ametek, a m e t e k dot com. They can also, call me, call me directly at two one six four zero seven nine nine three two. Fantastic. Easy enough. I love when our guests throw out every channel possible. Always always, you know, a sign of goodwill. So team, thank you so much for your time. Again, Ahmad and Mike, y'all really, you know, gave us the full scope of the project, and I'm looking forward to continuing our conversations. I'm sure we have more case studies coming up, more thought leadership to bring to the podcast. Until then, we'll go ahead and call it. So Ahmad, Mike, thanks again for joining us, and we'll chat again soon. Sure. Thank you. A lot, guys. Thanks, Ahmad. Thank you. Thanks, Daniel. We hope you enjoyed part three of this three part conversation. But if you wanna listen to the whole conversation unedited and complete in its thought leadership, you can do so very soon on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and also on tech m f g dot com. Make sure that you subscribe and keep an eye out for that full conversation for your convenience. Available soon. I'm Daniel Litwin, the voice of b two b, and we'll catch you again soon.