Material delivery system for clean room-like environments

Abstract

A material delivery system is disclosed which is particularly useful for filtered environments, such as clean rooms, minienvironments, or the like. In one embodiment, the material delivery system is disposed below a work area in a clean room-like environment to store parts to be used at the work area. In another embodiment, the material delivery system includes a material delivery elevator for transporting parts to a desired elevational level. In yet another embodiment, the material delivery system includes a cover which is detachably interconnected with a body to define an enclosed material storage area. An assembly is provided to lock the cover down onto the body with a gasket therebetween to appropriately seal this interconnection. This same assembly lifts the cover up and away from the body so as to not damage this gasket. Finally, this same assembly also allows the cover to be rolled off of the body without exposing the gasket to any shear-like forces so as to further reduce the potential for damage to the gasket during removal of the cover from the body.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.