INDUSTRY NEWS

Nuts about bolts

Here's the Fujikin gas stick. Using this small torque wrench, remove four bolts from the stick. Take these tweezers, clip them onto a gasket measuring about 1/8 in., remove it from one of the two valves, and pick up a new gasket with the tweezers. Place that gasket into the valve. Then place the valves onto the gas stick. Using the wrench, replace the bolts. Do all this in 18 seconds, and you've set a new world record. And perhaps won the top prize, a digital camera.

For four years now, this instructional contest has drawn respectable crowds to Fujikin of America's booth during Semicon West. The stick is an integrated system for injecting gases into process chambers, and the contest is not just a contest to draw looky-loos, insists Dino Tsapatsaris, Fujikin of America's marketing director.

The product is "basically, a stick with two valves," says Tsapatsaris. "This [contest] shows that the gaskets don't fall out in the cleanroom." The valve can be placed in any position and there's no need to remove the process tool's gas panel, he notes. "The valve goes in correctly and is perfectly aligned."

Of course, that could be the marketer talking, but a repeat contestant backs up Tsapatsaris's ease-of-use claims. Jan d'Ailly, a show visitor from Canada, completed the challenge this year in 34.02 seconds. The contestant notes he's "not a field service engineering guy who deals with these every day." And the record-holder? Well, perhaps he should be disqualified, inasmuch as he works with Fujikin Japan.