Excellent: Highly clean, automated wafer storage in a confined space

The Robotics Award is presented by Stäubli Robotics, the world leader in industrial automation, every two years at their Partner Summit. With this award, the company honors particularly innovative robot solutions in the automation sector. 

This year, we were pleased to receive this special honor for our fully automated storage system for wafers – the CubeStocker. The Fabmatics engineers integrated the six-axis Stäubli cleanroom robot TX2-90XL in Super Cleanroom (SCR) design in the implementation of the innovative system. Here, it performs demanding handling tasks and ensures precise handling of the valuable load.

Our managing directors Dr. Roland Giesen and Dr. Andreas Purath were delighted and proud to accept the Robotics Award on the evening of October 19, 2023 at Castle Philippsruhe in Hanau:

From left to right: Johannes Seitz, Area Sales Manager General Industry STÄUBLI Robotics, Dr. Roland Giesen, Managing Director Fabmatics GmbH & Dr. Andreas Purath, Managing Director Fabmatics GmbH | Image: Stäubli

“It is a great honor for us to receive this year’s Robotics Award for our CubeStocker. We very much appreciate the trusting and professional cooperation with Stäubli. We have been using Stäubli robots in other automation solutions for many years. They meet our requirements for cleanliness, reliability and precision to the highest degree and enjoy high acceptance among our customers.”

The CubeStocker: Precision, particle-free and 100% safety

The CubeStocker was developed by Fabmatics as a floor-based fully automatic storage system for open 200mm wafer carriers.

Required task

•  Realization of a clean room compatible, fully automated storage solution with high packing density on a small footprint for open wafer cassettes
•  Connection of the system to an existing transport system
•  Enable direct access at any time to any stored cassette (random access)
•  Fully automated storage and retrieval of material

Challenges

• Ensure ISO 3 class cleanroom environment both for storage and handling
• Fast access times
• Utilization of the entire room height from floor to ceiling, reaching every single storage slo

Solution: High-purity 360° storage of wafer cassettes in the CubeStocker

• “Storage cabinet” with storage locations on all four inside sides from floor to ceiling (total of about 200 lots).
  
•  In the center, a robot portal consisting of the Stäubli TX2-90XL 6-axis robot in Super Cleanroom design, which is raised or lowered on two linear axes while moving
•  Own cleanroom atmosphere due to built-in filter fan units

The CubeStocker offers a unique combination of compact installation space, good integration into the processes and integrated cleanroom atmosphere.

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