Seagate Technology Incorporated

Sushil Shah

William G Jacobs

William Edwin Kuhns

Alan Flint

Quy C Nguyen

Steven A Shifman

Ken Miller

An automated disc washing machine having, in sequence, a loading station for loading a disc into the disc washing machine, at least one cleaning station for cleaning a disc, and an unloading station for unloading a cleaned disc from the disc washing machine. The disc washing machine also has a pivoted transfer arm connected adjacent the sequence of loading, cleaning and unloading stations for sequentially transferring a disc from the loading station to the cleaning station in one complete transfer cycle of the arm and from the cleaning station to the unloading station in another complete transfer cycle of the arm.

Disc washing system

A step-dwell transport apparatus and method for use in an in-line controlled environment processing system is disclosed. The transport apparatus employs a plurality of shuttles arranged in series along two parallel rails. Each shuttle carries one or more planar objects through a process chamber, which contains several in-line processing stations. One of the rails guides a queue of abutting shuttles through the process chamber, while the other rail serves as a return path for another queue of abutting shuttles. The shuttles move along each rail, with locomotion along the rail being provided by a pneumatic cylinder and linkage that periodically pushes forward the trailing shuttle in the queue. Transfer mechanisms are provided at each end of the apparatus to transfer individual shuttles from the end of one rail to the beginning of the other rail. Shuttles are supplied to and withdrawn from the process chamber one at a time through in-line air locks.

In-line disk sputtering system

Growing community of inventors

Alameda County, CA, United States of America

Sushil Shah