CASE STUDIES

Product Upgrades for Film Frame Handling

Product manufacturers often require field upgrades to extend product life. Owens Design has worked with many customers to create field retrofit-able kits and upgrades. For one customer, a leading manufacturer of laser processing systems for semiconductor advanced packaging, Owens developed a low cost, self-contained, fully configurable module that can be easily upgraded to their entire installed base.

Business Proposition

A leading manufacturer of laser processing systems for semiconductor advanced packaging had been very successful selling manually loaded systems and now their customers were demanding fully automated loading to meet ramping factory volume. Not wanting to lose sales to their competitors, the product marketing group decided they needed to offer a field upgradeable solution immediately. One complication was that it would have to work with multiple model types already in the field.

Owens Design worked with the marketing and engineering groups to define a low cost, configurable solution that met their customer’s needs. Once the concept was test marketed and received favorable reviews, Owens developed the film frame handling module and installed units on several systems in the field. Field upgradeability was enabled by a small on board controller that allowed off-line testing and a simple Ethernet communication protocol.

Technical Details

Film Frame Handling

  • Frame sizes: 150, 200, 300 mm
  • Materials: Metal or plastic
  • Cassettes: 13 slot x 200 mm; 25 slot x 200 mm
  • Mapping, protrusion, cross and double slot sensing

Automation

  • Belt-drive transfer axis to minimize motion generated vibration
  • Buffer station to allow for maximum film frame transfer efficiency
  • Cassette loading from two directions
  • Two cassette capacity capable of continuous process

System Control

  • Small IDEC HMI touch panel for standalone control
  • Ethernet communication
  • SEMI F47 and CE compliant

Testimonial

“Owens Design met our requirements on an extremely compressed schedule, contributing to our product launch being an overwhelming success.”

Program Manager, Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturer