Product testing gamble pays off

02/01/2000

Carolyn Mathas

Port Washington, NY— Thomson Industries Inc. took a gamble. Without the promise of immediate return on investment, it became one of the first companies in its industry to test its products, and publish the particle emission results to customers and potential customers of its linear motion technology components and subsystems. So far, the gamble is paying off.

With customers representing a who's who in wafer handling equipment, wafer robots—virtually anything that moves a wafer or disk through manufacturing, the customers shared a common goal—to build equipment generating the least amount of particles during the manufacturing process [see "Component suppliers zero in on quality," CleanRooms, October 1998, p. 1].

"We didn't see any companies in our category doing this type of testing," says Jim Leonard, Thomson's Silicon Valley district manager.

"Initially," he says, "our motivation came from a customer who indicated that low particle emission was an important characteristic for a certain application. After looking into the test criteria at various test facilities, we contracted with Dryden Engineering (since acquired by Pentagon Technologies) to run the tests. We provided our customer with the test data. It was obvious that several companies required the same types of processes so we expanded the number of products tested, and now include verifiable particle emission data when we present our products."

Among Thomson's products already tested are its microstage line and modular metric ball screw drive products. Tests are conducted by placing a probe from a particle emissions tester at various locations along a slide to detect emissions while the product is operating. The locations generating more particles than others are identified. Results of the tests of both products show emission levels well within Class 10 requirements.