Wax Mount Demounter

ATI’s “Wax Mount Type” Wafer Demounters remove freshly polished wafers from their carrier plates using our proprietary demount blade manipulator technology. As wafers are demounted, they are transferred automatically into cassettes submerged in DI water. Our “scratch-free” wax demounter is available as a stand alone unit or as a completely automated system, fully integrated within a polishing line using our automated polishing plate handling conveyors.

Our fully automated and integrated demounter system communicates with upstream polishing lines to prepare for arriving carrier plates. After demounting our system also communicates with downstream conveyor systems and wax mount systems to assure smooth continuous product flow.

Once a carrier plate is positioned for demounting, the carrier plate is rotated on a turntable to sense the position of edge locating marks on the perimeter of the polishing plate. Wafers are then individually demounted, in the same order as originally mounted, and are automatically transported to a submerged cassette by an inclined water slide. Average demount time is between 2 and 3 seconds per wafer.

A water cushion between the wafer and the slide protects wafers from abrasion damage during the cassetting process. As individual wafers are cassetted, an elevator lowers the cassette, one slot at a time into a water tank. The demounted wafers are stored, “submerged” in DI water, until an operator retrieves them using the system’s cassette return feature.