Like a number of major Japanese computer manufacturers, Fujitsu Ltd is focussing on environmental issues and is aiming to eliminate use of harmful to the ozone layer ChloroFluroCarbons by March 1993. Fujitsu has made a number of changes to manufacturing processes already which have eliminated harmful substances, including the introduction in 1990 of a clean soldering process which eliminated the need to clean printed circuit boards after soldering. The company also takes pride in having eliminated the use of CFCs from the hard disk production process. After two years of testing, it developed a means of water-based cleaning, in which the disk drive goes through several stages including ultrasonic cleaning in an aqueous solution, followed by fine-cleaning with micro-filtered deionised water, then drying via water-vapor heating and vacuum drying. The new process uses micro-filtered deionised water, and drys via water-vapour heating and vacuum drying. The new process has a cleaning capacity several times greater than the previous use of CFC-113, at about half the cost.
