Clean
Room: Clean Robot
There’s no doubt that
consumer electronics is a huge market with the industry expected
to generate over $165 billion in revenue within the US in 2010.
With cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, DVRs, and MP3 players
our lives have changed significantly in the past decade. The
world is in love with consumer electronics and while they are
manufactured to be robust and sustain an occasional slip from
our hand, they contain sensitive components requiring precision
handling during manufacturing. While certain industries have
suffered under a straining economy, the consumer electronic supply
chain with its clean room requirements is growing and cleanroom
robotics solutions will pay a key part in this growth. The following
article is an informative guide on considerations to keep in
mind when considering automating your cleanroom processes.
“The past decade has changed
our daily activities in such a way that we cannot imagine a life
without the convenience of an iPhone, DVR, digital camera or
our other favorite electronic gadgets,” said Rush LaSelle
director of worldwide sales and marketing for Adept Technology,
Inc. a leading manufacturer of intelligent vision-guided robotics. “All
the images, music and video created by and stored on these gadgets
generate tremendous demand for data storage. Studies show that
with the increased speed and convenience of file transfer, the
average consumer stores these memory intensive files in at least
two locations demanding even greater capacity. Industry data
also suggests that consumers will purchase at least two hard
drives in ten years, so demand for manufacturing storage devices
and memory is growing exponentially.”
So, what do you need to know about clean room robots and equipment
to service this market? How are they different from - traditional
robots? What about certification, maintenance and those pesky
particles? Following is a quick guide to all things clean
when it comes to robots.
By virtue of its name, cleanrooms control the level of particle
contamination present that can potentially degrade the products
being manufactured. Cleanrooms are classified according to
the number and size of the particles permitted per volume
of air. For example, a Class 10 cleanroom denotes that no
more than ten particles of 0.5 µm or larger and zero
particles of 5.0 or larger are permitted per square foot
of air. Contaminants can be generated by people, process,
facilities and equipment. In order to control contaminants
that are invisible to the human eye, the manufacturing cell
and in many cases the entire room must be controlled. Robots
used in this environment must meet stringent clean room certification
requirements to prevent them for acting as a source of contamination.
A Robot is a Robot is a Robot
Well, not exactly. How do cleanroom
robots differ from their standard counterparts? Much of the hardware
used in a cleanroom robot is the same as any other robot with
the important exception of a combination of sealed covers to
prevent particles from escaping the robot, stainless steel hardware,
proper non-gassing lubricants and vacuum to evacuate any internally
generated particles.
“
Robots designed for clean room processes have special considerations
for harnesses. From a design standpoint the harness can be a
serious particulate generator and a major design challenge for
clean applications,” said Scott Klimczak president of CHAD
Industries, a pioneer in the area of wafer and substrate handling
WLP I (Wafer Level Packaging) applications. “Understanding
the harness requirements and how the robot design will integrate
a harness should always be stressed in the robot selection.”
 |
|
 |
| Internal Harness Example |
|
External Harness Example |
As a matter of practice, materials
prone to particle generation are substituted or coated to eliminate
the potential for contamination of the manufacturing area and
ultimately the components being processed. Depending on your
application, cleanroom robots can be linear, SCARA, six-Axis
or delta type robots but they all must meet strict cleanroom
certifications.
Robot Certification
Certification is done by counting the number of particles that
are generated when the robot is in motion. For this process
the industry employs particle counters which have to be
calibrated to meet or exceed the standards set by NIST (National
Institute
of Standards and Technology). In addition to NIST traceable
practices, other standards of particle counter calibration
include Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) B 9921, Light
Scattering Automatic Particle Counter, and ASTM F 328-98,
Standard Practice for Calibration of an Airborne Particle
Counter Using Monodisperse Particles. It is important to
fully understand your customer’s requirements and
the standards they adhere to. These particle counters are
placed
in various locations from where particles can enter the
environment from the robot to determine the cleanroom class.
Adept Technology,
Inc. a leading manufacturer of cleanroom robots tests robots
both internally and through third party testing and certification
to ensure integrators and end-users deploy their equipment
appropriately to meet manufacturing cleanliness requirements.
“Our robots are designed for high speed, precision applications frequently
involving vision guidance. The challenge with this market segment is that it
demands careful consideration of not only the components used to develop a highly
robust manufacturing process but the manner in which they are integrated has
significant impact on the ultimate cleanliness of the cell,” said LaSelle. “The
success of an installation is heavily dependent on tightly integrating engineering
and sales teams, Adept has been able to deliver standard and custom cleanroom
robot solutions tailored to our client’s requirements by investing time
and resource in advance of system design to apply lessons-learned from its extensive
experience in cleanroom applications.”
The Right Fit
Manufacturers with a cleanroom application have numerous options when considering
how to manipulate parts and automate their processes. What should you consider
when choosing the right robot? Because each company has unique requirements
the best approach is to begin by determining answers to the following questions
and work directly with the robot manufacturer to select the optimal robot configuration.
