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April, 2011
Assembly and Packaging
Linear Motion System Speeds Hard Disk Production
By Rick Trees, Key Account Manager, and Thomas Christmann, Director Sales Semiconductor and Solar Industry, Bosch Rexroth Corporation Buchanan, MI
same time, hard disk manufacturers are facing strong price and competi- tive pressures. This combination makes it critical for hard disk manu- facturers to maximize throughput. The more hard disks produced by a single hard disk manufacturing tool, the greater the return on invest- ment. Intevac, Inc. (
http://www.inte-
T
vac.com), of Santa Clara, CA, pro- duces an important perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) hard disk manufacturing tool: the 200 Lean® system. This improved system was developed in response to hard disk manufacturers’ demands (Intevac’s customers) for a hard disk sputtering tool with faster throughput and greater availability for production. One of Intevac’s main goals for
its second generation 200 Lean sys- tem was to develop an improved transport system that would enable significantly faster throughput. To accomplish this, engineers from Intevac and Bosch Rexroth combined their efforts to integrate the innova- tive Linear Motion System (LMS) on Intevac’s 200 Lean Gen II system. “Higher throughput is the key
to lowering our customers’ capital costs per disk,” says Chuck Liu, Intevac’s general manager for hard disk drive products. “We were pleased that Rexroth wanted to work with us to design a transport system that met our requirements to dra- matically boost throughput in our 200 Lean Gen II system, enhance system availability for manufactur- ing operations, and improve product quality for our customers.” Intevac was one of the first com-
panies to successfully bring PMR deposition technology to the hard disk manufacturing market. The 200 Lean Gen II system demonstrates the company’s ongoing leadership in vacuum deposition sputtering tech- nology — depositing thin films of a recording medium onto a glass or metal substrate. The 200 Lean hard disk sputter-
ing tool is used to produce 3.5- and 2.5-in. (89 and 63mm) hard disks used for desktop and laptop computers, dig- ital video recorders, and other con-
There are no rollers or other mechanical drive elements to generate debris, eliminating a possible source of contaminants.
for their second-generation system. Each process station inside the
200 Lean system deposits a specific layer of the media structure, such as a soft magnetic underlayer, an oxide- segregated magnetic layer or a car- bon overcoat, depending on the process. The Gen II system can also
with the 200 Lean to 1,000 disks per hour with our Gen II system — a 25 percent improvement in throughput.”
Inverted Linear Motors Intevac worked closely with
Rexroth to define the project and develop the initial control technology
compact, multi-axis control system with integrated drive technology. Because of these integrated drives, user-friendly tunable software and multi-functional capabilities, the NYCe 4000 system complemented Intevac’s 200 Lean modular design.
Continued on page 58
The Intevac 200 Lean® Gen II system uses a Rexroth linear motion system to increase throughput by 25% to 1,000 disks per hour.
the 200 Lean Gen II, the Intevac engi- neering team wanted to see if the Rexroth linear motion system with NYCe 4000 motion control technology could be configured to increase throughput to the level they required
“Most hard disk manufacturers
use 20 stations,” says Liu. “Rexroth demonstrated that its linear motion system could cut transport time between stations by 50 percent. This increases production from 800 disks
oday’s growth in digital data has created a huge demand for hard disk storage media. At the
sumer electronics. Throughput with Intevac’s first generation 200 Lean is approximately 800 disks per hour. For
be used for heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) and patterned media disk processing.
and the hardware to create the Gen II transport mechanism. In the Gen II design, Rexroth was able to move the disk carriers independently from one process to another at high speed and with high precision using a patented, non-contact linear motor drive system. Standard linear motion systems
that use iron core brushless motors employ rare earth magnets in a sta- tionary track, with coils incorporated in a “forcer” that moves along the track. The Rexroth LMS uses inverted linear motors with coils embedded in the track and a magnetic plate embed- ded in each disk carrier. The plate on the carrier is then magnetically cou- pled to the coils, which are located out- side of the vacuum chamber. The car- rier moves when the electromagnetic coils are activated in a controlled sequence, passing control of the carri- er’s magnetic plate from one coil to the next without losing position or control of motion. Thus, the disk carrier moves from one process chamber to another, passing through a slot valve between the chambers. Perfect carrier hand-offs between stations are enabled by Hall-effect sensors tied into a NYCe 4000 motion controller. The NYCe 4000 system is a
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