Material or article handling – Apparatus for charging a load holding or supporting element... – Load holding or supporting element including gripping means
Patent
1986-04-22
1989-02-21
Spar, Robert J.
Material or article handling
Apparatus for charging a load holding or supporting element...
Load holding or supporting element including gripping means
1983461, 1983462, 2941031, 414404, 414416, 414417, 414433, 414757, 414786, B65G 6530
Patent
active
048060577
ABSTRACT:
An automated diffusion furnace load station has a cassette and wafer transporter which selectively transports, using a support assembly, wafer-filled cassettes from a delivery station to a transfer post over which a loaded cassette is lowered to suspend the set of wafers above the cassette. The transporter causes the support assembly to release the cassette and engage the wafers to transfer them as a set to a carrier of a diffusion furnace tube. The process is reversed for unloading processed wafers from a furnace carrier and loading them into a cassette. The process further may be sequentially performed to exchange sets of processed wafers from a furnace carrier with sets of unprocessed wafers located in cassettes at a delivery station. The support assembly is used to selectively support a cassette or a set of wafers removed from a cassette by selectively positioning a pair of jaws relative to a cassette or to a set of wafers for supporting the same. Apparatus is also disclosed for aligning the flat edges of wafers in a cassette and, selectively and sequentially raising individual wafers in the cassette to expose a margin of the wafers for optical scanning.
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Quartz International brochure entitled, "The Best Transfer System Just Got Better . . . ", undated.
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Spar Robert J.
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