A major manufacturer of semiconductor equipment was experiencing frequent field bearing failures in its ION implant machinery. They me if we could study the mechanical design to determine why this could be happening as the bearings were only lasting a small fraction of the expected design life
The mechanism design geometry was modelled using CAD and a kinematic analysis was performed so the potential problems could be identified. It was found that if any small misalignment in the mechanism occurred it would impose an axial motion on the ball bearings, overloading them and causing them to fail. A simple solution was proposed: replace one of the two axial shaft ball bearings with a roller bearing to release these axial loads. This solution was simple to implement and eliminated the field failure issue
Each occurrence of the bearing failure in the field was costing approximately $10,000 to repair and, a bigger financial impact, causing significant production downtime in the order of 7-10 days which was causing severe product liability issues for the semiconductor manufacturer.
Responsible for identifying the potential issue, analyzing the mechanism using the ADAMS software to confirm the issue and for formulating and recommending a solution to the customer.
