MARCH 28–RED WING, Minn.–MoZAK Systems, Inc. has completed the shipment of six Pulsed-Air Wire Strippers (PAWS-750B) to two different semiconductor fabrication sites in Southeast Asia.
The PAWS-750B is a fully automated, continuous cleaning system that removes microscopic bond wires from read/write heads in the production of hard disk drives. Five of the PAWS-750B units were shipped to Penang, Malaysia and one to Korat, Thailand.
According to Timothy R. Maroushek, president of MoZAK, the customer in Thailand initiated negotiations for the purchase and delivery of a 2nd unit as soon as the 1st became operational. The new order is expected to ship in mid-June.
Maroushek says the PAWS-750B is the 4th generation of cleaning tools the company has developed for customers in the semiconductor industry.
“Advancements in magnetic recording technology have doubled the storage densities of hard disk drives nearly every year over the last decade; and, now the dimensional requirements for this segment of the industry have nearly merged with those of the integrated circuit,” he adds.
Where the critical dimensions of computer chips have decreased annually at a rate of 10 to 20 percent, the widths of a hard disk read sensor and write pole tip have decreased 20 to 30 percent.
As a result, the flying height of a head’s magnetic sensors is only 10 nanometers above the surface of the hard disk.