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Automation of semiconductor fabrication
The prospect of increased yields, rather than just labour cost savings, will spur Europe's semiconductor industry to spend heavily on automation hardware and software through the decade. According to a report from Frost ~Sullivan, growth in these expenditures will increase in constant-dollar terms at a compound rate of 40,3% per annum between 1986 and 1990. A subsequent flattening in sales is expected to result in a rate of only 27.7% for the whole of the forecast period, 1986 to 1993, covered in the study. 'The automated semiconductor wafer fabrication market in Europe'. In absolute terms, the market appears small, growing from only $12.1 million estimated for 1986 to a forecast $66.9 million in 1993; this is roughly a tenth of the size of the US market. However, the report says that Europe's importance in the worldwide movement to semiconductor fabrication automation is far greater than the numbers would suggest. The cooperative research projects which European governments underwrite to ensure that European automation experiments will become public much more quickly than those in the USA, where anti-trust laws confine such investigations within individual corporations. Europe has thus become a test market that is being watched closely around the world. Two particular projects that are examined by the study in their role as trendsetters are the Siemens-Philips 'Megachip' project and the UK Alvey AMT joint project. In the key product area of global factory management systems, the report notes that the number of suppliers has shrunk recently from half a dozen to just two--Consilium Inc, and Promis group of I.P. Sharp Associates. This in turn has given Digital Equipment Corp an unexpected monopoly in hardware. Frost ~ Sullivan Ltd, Sullivan House, 4 Grosvenor Gardens, London, SWlW 0DH, UK

Rotary encoder uses laser

The compact rotary encoder announced by Canon uses laser beam diffraction to provide an accuracy of up to 1 arcsec. The rotating element has 20 250 slits with widths of 1.4/~m. The semiconductor laser beam is divided and sent through two symmetrical slits in the grating disc. The resulting beams are reflected and only the first order diffracted beams detected. This results in 81 000 wave pulses per revolution being produced, which when electronically subdivided by 16 gives the accuracy of 1 arcsec per pulse. The construction allows shifts in wavelengths to a certain extent and can prevent the shifts from having an effect on measured values. The incident laser is directed at two symmetrical spots on a line from the centre of the disc in order to absorb eccentric errors caused by the rotation of the disc. This process requires an increase of components used, but the company compensated for this by devising suitably shaped parts and optimizing their arrangement, thus minimizing the size of the encoder. Two types of encoder are available, one producing a sinusoidal output and the other a square wave. The sine wave allows detection of two directions, and the square wave enables easy division by up to 16. The outside diameter of the unit is only 36 mm. Applications are expected as sensors in robots, NC machines and surveying equipment. Canon Europe NV., Industrial Products Division, Unit 3, Brent Trading Centre, North Circular Road, London, NWl0 0JF, UK

establishment of advanced lens design techniques for determining the best combination of lens and diaphragms. The company developed two types of this projection lens, one is an 'air coupling' type which has air between the CRT and the lens, and the other is an 'optical coupling' type which has a clear material in the space between the CRT and the lens in order to improve contrast. To assure temperature stability, both have 'hybrids' using two aspherical plastics lenses and one spherical glass lens. This simple construction, through a highly refractive convex biaspherical lens and a diaphragm, gives the lens compactness and high performance at the same time. For example, the company air-coupling type projection lens has an overall length of 121 mm (compared to 1 65 mm for existing glass lenses and 1 61 mm for existing plastic lenses), and as far as performance is concerned, it has a 20% higher ambient light ratio than flexible lenses, and an F-number of 1.0. Matsushita Electric Industrial Co Ltd, 1006, Kadoma, Kadoma City, Osaka, Japan

Combination measurement fixture

Designed for measuring multiple dimensions simultaneously, the combination measurement fixture for cylindrical components from C.E. Johansson can be operated manually or automatically with a built-in programmable logic controller. It can be quickly set up for handling a range of workpieces in an FMS or production cell environment. For post-process gauging in automatic production applications, a robot or other equipment can be used for work loading and unloading. Gauging is carried out with groups of preset transducers mounted on interchangeable backplates, in conjunction with a new Metem series 250 column indicator with data storage facilities. With the aid of a remote display terminal, the indicator can be programmed for measuring up to 18 dimensions on each of a maximum of 12 components. With the Metem system, inspection data from the column indicator can be down-loaded to a computer system for statistical analysis and other management

Aspherical lens production

Mass production of an aspherical plastic lens, used in video production, has been started by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. The lens is shorter than conventional ones due to a special diaphragm which screens out unwanted light and the

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