Kawasaki Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha

Daiki Miyagawa

Takayuki Fukushima

Ryosuke Kanamaru

Yasuhiko Hashimoto

Shinya Kinoshita

The end effector has a first hand and a second hand which can be driven independently from each other. The first hand has a hand body which can be inserted between vertically adjacent substrates stored in a substrate storing portion, holding a substrate immediately above or immediately below the hand body. The second hand has a hand base portion which at least partially advances below a lowermost substrate or above an uppermost substrate of a plurality of substrates stored in a substrate storing portion and a substrate holding means provided to the hand base portion so as to hold two or more substrates including the lowermost substrate or the uppermost substrate. By the end effector, substrates can be conveyed without any problem even when use of a batch conveying type hand is restricted due to the condition on the substrate storing portion side.

Substrate conveying system and method

An end effector has a hand base portion at least a part of which advances below a lowermost substrate or above an uppermost substrate of a plurality of substrates stored in a substrate storing portion, a substrate holding unit provided to the hand base portion so as to hold the two or more substrates including the lowermost substrate or the uppermost substrate, and a protrusion amount change unit for changing a protrusion amount of the substrate holding unit from a reference surface including the surface of the hand base portion opposed to the lowermost substrate or the uppermost substrate. The protrusion amount change unit has a single drive source applying a drive force to the whole substrate holding unit.

End effector and substrate conveying robot

An end effector has a plurality of blade bodies and a substrate holding unit on a blade proximal end side of each of the blade bodies. The substrate holding unit includes a substrate placing portion on which the bottom surface edge portion of the substrate is placed and a substrate abutting portion which extends upward from the blade proximal end side of the substrate placing portion and on which the side end portion of the substrate abuts. The height of the substrate abutting portion is set to keep the substrate from entering between an upper end of the substrate abutting portion of the blade body on a lower side and the bottom surface of the blade body on an upper side. In an end effector having a plurality of blades capable of changing in pitch in the vertical direction, substrates mounted in high density can be held without a problem.

An end effector device is provided with a hand; a plurality of holding portions that are provided to the hand, and that hold a plurality of semiconductor wafers such that the plurality of semiconductor wafers are arranged at intervals in the vertical direction in a parallel attitude; a single detector that is arranged outside the plurality of semiconductor wafers viewed from the vertical direction, and that is configured to be able to detect the presence of each one of the semiconductor wafers, opposing a peripheral portion of the semiconductor wafer; and a detector moving mechanism that moves the single detector relative to the plurality of semiconductor wafers in the vertical direction such that the single detector opposes the peripheral portion of every semiconductor wafer.

End effector device

The end effector device includes a hand having a storing space, and a plurality of holding portions provided to the hand and configured to respectively peripheral portions of each plate member. Each holding portion includes a plurality of receiving portions which respectively receive a plurality of plate members keeping vertical pitches among them, and a pitch changing mechanism configured to change intervals by vertically moving the plurality of receiving portions respectively. A plurality of linearly moving portions configured to respectively move linearly integrally with the plurality of receiving portions are provided to the hand being exposed outside of the hand, and a plurality of drive portions configured to drive the plurality of linearly moving portions of the pitch changing mechanism are stored in the storing space of the hand.

Growing community of inventors

Akashi, Japan

Daiki Miyagawa