Reduce Weight, Minimize Vibration, and Consolidate Parts for Increased Reliability, Improved Manufacturing, and Yield
>50%
weight reduction in flexures
23%
higher resonant frequency and reduced system vibration

Create Structurally Optimized and Lightweight Advanced Flexure Designs

semiconductor conventional flexure kinematics image

Part courtesy of VDL

Additive manufacturing allows for the structural optimization and light-weighting of advanced flexure designs that reduce weight and minimize vibration to meet the exacting requirements of semiconductor capital equipment. Additionally, multipart assemblies can be replaced with monolithic parts for increased reliability, improved manufacturing, and yield.  

With years of application engineering experience in the semiconductor industry, we can help you optimize the structural designs of flexures, advanced motion mechanisms, and components. Additive manufacturing gives designers the flexibility to optimize the structural topology of your part (i.e., lightweighting) with a suite of high-strength metal alloys. These designs can meet the performance requirements of semiconductor capital equipment more precisely, improve the strength-to-weight ratio, and deliver a faster time to market. With our metal additive solutions, you can also avoid traditional complex manufacturing assembly by consolidating several parts into one, which improves yield and reliability and reduces labor and inspection costs. 

The Benefits of Metal Additive Manufacturing

  • Semiconductor DMP Manifold in 3DXpert

  • Design Flexibility ‘Function over Form’

    Additive manufacturing makes it possible to optimally design, rapidly iterate, and manufacture lightweight, topology-optimized flexures much closer to the ideal kinematics required with fewer unwanted degrees of freedom.

  • a person in protective gear holding a 3D printed part

  • High Quality and Accuracy for Clean Room Environments

    Our metal additive manufacturing solutions ensure high material quality and part accuracy, producing parts in an inert atmosphere with a steady, ultra-low oxygen level—coupled with proprietary processes for optimal particle cleanliness. This results in metal parts that meet cleanroom requirements and are fit for use in lithography equipment.

  • Flexure Demonstrator Image for Semiconductor

  • Performance and Productivity

    Light-weighting semiconductor components and advanced motion mechanisms reduces inertia and improves lithography and wafer processing machine speed and uptime, leading to more wafers processed. Additive manufacturing also delivers structurally optimized flexures with reduced part counts and assemblies. Replacing multipart assemblies with monolithic parts increases reliability, improves manufacturing yield, and reduces labor costs.

Answer Challenges Related to Flexure and Structural Optimization

  • Silicon Wafers and Microcircuits sitting on a robot arm

    Reduce Vibration, Hysteresis and Inertia to Improve Cycle Time

    Semiconductor capital equipment features fast-moving mechanisms and components, and unnecessary weight can induce vibration, resonance, and inertia into the system, which negatively affects system accuracy and speed.

  • semiconductor vdl focus stack flexure structural optimization image

    Optimized Strength-to-Weight Ratios

    Reducing flexure weight and vibration requires designs with optimal strength-to-weight ratios to deliver exceptional system performance.

    Part courtesy of VDL

  • semiconductor conventional flexure kinematics image

    Advanced Flexure Kinematics

    Conventional flexures can be bulky and still deviate from the ideal kinematics, resulting in accuracy deviations and crosstalk.

    Part courtesy of VDL

More Semiconductor Applications

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Manifold Fluid Flow Optimization
semiconductor wafer table thermal management link

Wafer Table Thermal Management
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DMP Flex 350

Robust, flexible metal 3D printer for 24/7 part production

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3DXpert

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  • Application Innovation Group

    Our team can help you solve your most difficult design and production challenges with additive manufacturing solutions. Together we’ll identify your needs, working with you to optimize your designs, prototype, validate and define a manufacturing flow.

    Find Out More