Pneumatically actuated flexure gripper for wafer handling robots

The present invention generally provides a robot that can transfer workpieces, such as silicon wafers, at increased speeds and accelerations and decelerations. More particularly, the present invention provides a robot wrist associated with the robot arm for mechanically clamping a workpiece to a wor...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors SUNDAR, SATISH, MATTHEW, NED G
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 01.08.2001
Edition7
Subjects
BASIC ELECTRIC ELEMENTS
CHAMBERS PROVIDED WITH MANIPULATION DEVICES
ELECTRIC SOLID STATE DEVICES NOT OTHERWISE PROVIDED FOR
ELECTRICITY
HAND TOOLS
MANIPULATORS
PERFORMING OPERATIONS
PORTABLE POWER-DRIVEN TOOLS
SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES
TRANSPORTING
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Summary:The present invention generally provides a robot that can transfer workpieces, such as silicon wafers, at increased speeds and accelerations and decelerations. More particularly, the present invention provides a robot wrist associated with the robot arm for mechanically clamping a workpiece to a workpiece handling member attached to the arm. The wafer clamp selectively applies sufficient force to hold the workpiece and prevent slippage and damage to the workpiece during rapid rotation and linear movement of the handling member. In a particular embodiment, a clamp for securing silicon wafers uses a flexure assembly to position and hold the wafer with minimal particle generation and wafer damage. The clamp is designed so that the wafers are normally clamped near full extension of the workpiece handling member to deliver or pick up a wafer. A particular embodiment uses a pneumatic cylinder to actuate the flexure assembly so that the flexure assembly moves outwardly and rearwardly away from the wafer when actuated at or near full extension of the workpiece handling member.
Bibliography:Application Number: TW20000105868