From mtang at stanford.edu  Mon Apr  3 10:03:13 2006
From: mtang at stanford.edu (Mary Tang)
Date: Mon, 03 Apr 2006 10:03:13 -0700
Subject: New Nickel blades
Message-ID: <44315551.7030906@stanford.edu>

Hi everyone --

There are new blades in the stockroom.  The standard Semitec 3530 blades 
still have a 16 week lead time (they moved production from Santa Clara 
to China!), so I decided to order these nickel blades from an alternate 
manufacturer.  These blades are $48/each (versus the $25/each for the 
Semitec.)  The blades are also thinner at 2 mils versus the standard 3 
mils.  There are two kinds of blades -- please double-check the part 
number before you take one:

D3T20L30:  there are 20 of these.  They are 30 mils deep, sufficient for 
cutting part-way into a single layer of silicon substrate.
D3T20L60:  there are 5 of these.  They are 60 mils deep, sufficient for 
cutting double-thick, bonded silicon or all the way through a single 
silicon substrate of standard thickness.  You probably don't want to use 
this blade to cut only 350-400 microns deep, as you would be using only 
the outer edge of the blade -- and it may "chatter" to give you an 
uneven cut or even break.

Please be aware that these blades are different.  If you use one, please 
try it out on a test substrate using your usual dicing parameters just 
to make sure everything is OK before committing your device wafers.

Thanks for your attention --

Mary


-- 
Mary X. Tang, Ph.D.
Stanford Nanofabrication Facility
CIS Room 136, Mail Code 4070
Stanford, CA  94305
(650)723-9980
mtang at stanford.edu
http://snf.stanford.edu