When dealing with third-party distributors who offer wet bench stations built by someone else, customers often pay more and get less. A wet bench manufacturer that designs and builds its own wet bench equipment in-house develops the expertise and capabilities needed to satisfy customer requirements. The manufacturer can respond directly to customer requests and design tailored or full custom solutions to meet specific requirements. With a wet bench manufacturer who has in-house expertise, customers can get exactly what they need.
Customizing Wet Bench Designs to Match Customer Needs Requires In-House Expertise
Semiconductor manufacturers and research labs often work with tight specifications that can’t be satisfied with standard wet bench stations. Customization requirements can range from space limitations to special robotics and software to control specific processing requirements. When manufacturers carry out their own design work, they are aware of the possibilities and limitations of specific semiconductor manufacturing processes. They can then easily advise customers what solutions are available and help choose the best one. Customers end up with optimized designs for equipment that works the way they want.
Building Custom Wet Bench Stations Requires Extensive In-House Manufacturing Experience
When wet bench manufacturers carry out their own design work, they know how to build what they design. Their designs are based on extensive in-house manufacturing experience gained over many years of building wet bench stations. They know what works and have been able to feed this experience back to their design engineers. With suppliers that carry out both design and manufacturing in-house, customers get wet bench equipment that is designed to their specifications and that is based on extensive manufacturing experience.
Wet Bench Manufacturers Can Provide Superior Customer Service and Support
With in-house design and manufacturing personnel, companies can provide knowledgeable customer support and after-sales service. When design, manufacturing, and process expertise resides in-house, service personnel know who to call if they run into problems. Support and service people will already be familiar with their own standard equipment and they have direct access to the design and manufacturing specialists that can guide them to find the best solutions for after-sales issues.
For wet bench technology, it’s especially important that the manufacturer also designs and writes the software that runs the process. Automation is becoming an increasingly important part of wet process equipment. Even if process steps are initiated manually, the software may be responsible for timing and dosages. For fully automatic stations, the software runs the whole process. Only the specialists who write the software can perform effective troubleshooting if there are unexpected operations or results. The wet bench manufacturer’s in-house expertise has to include the software.
Modutek Has Extensive Expertise Based on Long-Term Design and Manufacturing Experience
With over 40 years of experience in designing and building wet bench stations for industrial clients, Modutek is a leading wet bench manufacturer. Modutek works closely with customers to develop new technical solutions for current problems. In addition, Modutek actively leads technological innovation in fields such as wet bench process control, efficient chemical use, and reduction in particle contamination of silicon wafers. When customers identify new issues with semiconductor manufacturing, Modutek can often contribute to finding the best solutions.
Based on this long-term experience, Modutek personnel have developed extensive expertise in wet bench technology. The company designs its own equipment, including the development of its automation software. Wet bench stations are assembled and tested in-house at Modutek’s facility in San Jose which allows for easy customization. Modutek has a product line of standard equipment, including process tanks, chemical handling equipment, and complete wet process stations, the company can change dimensions, materials, robotics, process variables, and operator interfaces in accordance with customer requirements. In-house expertise is the key to these capabilities.
As semiconductor manufacturing becomes more complex, there is an increasing demand for custom solutions to special applications. Standard systems often can’t take into account the combination of multiple steps required to produce an etched silicon wafer. Instead they end up creating inefficiencies with poor quality output. Custom solutions can consider each separate requirement and can assemble a production line in which each step is optimized for peak performance.