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The Players
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Chandra Venkatraman
Product Mktg Mgr. – Semiconductor
Matt Kirk, Sr. Production Engineer |
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Ed Fisher, Senior Project Manager
Rich Fravel, Regional Sales Mgr. |
Brooks/MSP Turbo-Vaporizer™
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QUANTIM Mass Flow Meter/
Mass Flow Controller
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Bekaert's Dylan® coatings improve durability of wear parts.
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Bekaert  Brooks
Why does Bekaert 'love' Brooks? Because Brooks solved a problem that had been vexing Bekaert for years: Reliable precursor vaporization for a delicate vacuum coating process. Bekaert had been using an inferior vaporizer to apply their proprietary diamond-like coating, but the process was plagued with problems. The Brooks/MSP Turbo-Vaporizer™ changed all that.
The Story
Bekaert's coating process involves chemical vapor deposition of a diamond-like nanocomposite material, referred to as Dylyn®/DLC. The proprietary coating has low friction properties combined with improved hardness and wear resistance. The film is deposited in a modified plasma-assisted chemical vapor deposition (PACVD) process in a vacuum. Their coatings have found wide acceptance in the semiconductor equipment market, plastics injection molding market, in high performance racing, optical disc market and automotive market. These coatings are tailored to meet specific application needs in these markets and Bekaert is a leader in these markets.
According to Chandra Venkatraman, Bekaert had been seeking a better solution to their existing vaporization technology, specifically for their semiconductor market, for years. The unique precursor used in the process was difficult to vaporize and resulted in inconsistent flows and unacceptable process fluctuations. Poor vaporization caused unsatisfactory coating quality, resulting in a significant amount of re-work to achieve acceptable results.
When Matt Kirk, Bekaertís Senior Production engineer in their Amherst, New York facility discovered the Brooks/MSP Turbo-Vaporizer system, Ed Fisher and Rich Fravel from Brooks agreed to provide an on-site demo. Several qualification tests were performed that showed very good results, excellent stability and good coating properties - all within the customer's expected specification window. And best of all, the Brooks product eliminated the costly waste and re-work, significantly improving yield.
What are the secrets to the Brooks/MSP vaporizer technology? It's Brooks' QUANTIM mass flow controller coupled with the Brooks/MSP TurboVaporizer. Because Brooks' QUANTIM operates on the Coriolis principle, it measures and controls true mass flow, so there's no variation because of temperature, viscosity, or flow rate. The TurboVaporizer completely vaporizes the liquid without decomposition making the results repeatable and reliable, and it also dramatically reduces mean time between failures. Now Bekaert can record a customer's coating recipe, and "dial it in" ensuring that the results will be consistent and repeatable from one run to another.
The bottom line? The Brooks/MSP system has virtually vaporized all the waste, and enabled the process to be highly controlled and reliable. It is also enabling Bekaert to explore other new markets and opportunities that were previously unavailable due to the technology barrier.
Click here for more on the technical side of this story.
About Bekaert
Bekaert focuses on the development, marketing, production and sales of Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) and Diamond-Like Nanocomposite (Dylyn®) coatings for a variety of industrial application areas. These coatings are deposited using a PACVD (plasma assisted chemical vapor deposition) process at a deposition temperature below 200°C. Bekaert diamond-like coatings differ from other diamond-like coatings thanks to their unique properties - developed with clear understanding of customer needs in specified markets.
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