Aquest Systems Corp. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) said it is building a facility in Taichung, Taiwan, to demonstrate its automated material handling system (AMHS), with support from two corporate partners.
the dedicated 20,000 ft2 facility will be used to demonstrate the company's No-Wait-AMHS (NWA) handling system, which is part of the company's overall No-Wait-Manufacturing products and services. It will be located near several fabs in Central Taiwan Science Park. The NWA facility is expected to come
online later this year, and will emulate a 300 mm fab in production. It will simulate interactions with more than 48 different types of processing and inspection/metrology systems, involving 100 load ports, as well as interfaces to stockers and fab-wide material control software.
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| Aquest Systems complements existing overhead transport systems with high-speed conveyors. |
Aquest claims that the systems optimize material movements in an existing fab by minimizing bottlenecks in areas where the existing overhead transport (OHT) system cannot keep pace. Adding a FabEX conveyor eliminates the bottleneck and moves front-opening unified pods (FOUPs) at >3 m/sec between interface locations, including stocker and OHT I/O ports, according to the company.
The Aquest system directly interfaces with installed OHT-based material handling systems and stockers, and is typically installed directly below the already in place OHT system. The Aquest system interfaces to existing material control system (MCS) software via industry-standard SECS interfaces.
The company said it will install >300 m of its FabEX high-speed conveyors at the NWA, and >18 FabEX loaders will be in place. The goal is to demonstrate faster swap times, better response-to-burst capacity, and a higher movement capacity per bay, at >1000 moves per hour.
The facility will be built with support from automation equipment supplier Tera Autotech Corp. (Taichung, Taiwan) and "a major Japanese automation com