Non-contact Handling Equipment Utilising Ultrasonic Vibration

Abstract

Recently, non-contact chucks have been strongly required to handle various precision parts such as IC chips, optical lenses and silicon wafers to avoid adhering contaminations on the surface of these parts. Therefore, we have proposed a non-contact chuck utilizing ultrasonic vibration (called ‘the squeeze chuck’ in this paper) [1]. It is known that when a flat surface vibrates vertically at ultrasonic frequencies, both vertical and horizontal forces act on an object placed on the vibrating surface, enabling the vibrating surface to support an object vertically and horizontally without any contact[2] . The proposed non-contact chuck utilising this phenomena to handle various precision parts. In this study, we have experimentally investigated holding characteristics of the squeeze chuck