Personal milestone:

Been working on a plasma deposition machine for 3 solid months at my new job and finally today got a smoothly working machine running 900 watts of RF into an RF planar magnetron sputtering target that ran 150 scans over a 3 hour period, first time this year that anything like that level of performance for that machine.

it had many problems including an RF generator operating at the medical frequency of 13.56 Mhz but unable to put out more than about 700 watts. I pretty much rebuilt that generator and now it can put out 1800 watts, in fact had to cut down the peak to its normal 1500 watts max.

Then there were problems with interface chips in the computer causing computer crashes, bad cable connections, bad target (silicon carbide in this case) connections to the RF, water cooling lines too close to the RF feeds sucking off RF to the water!

Just one problem after another and I knocked them all down like bowling pins and it just did a really smooth run, now we get to measure what the thickness of the silicon carbide layer will be and then correlate it to another similar machine so it can go into production for real. Great day for me.

Originally posted by sonhouse
Been working on a plasma deposition machine for 3 solid months at my new job and finally today got a smoothly working machine running 900 watts of RF into an RF planar magnetron sputtering target that ran 150 scans over a 3 hour period, first time this year that anything like that level of performance for that machine.

it had many problems including an ...[text shortened]... correlate it to another similar machine so it can go into production for real. Great day for me.

I just got notification I will be presenting the results of all this to the owner of our company, who was getting a bit antsy about how long it was taking to get this machine up and running! So I will get a bit of personal credit for this work! Really good day.

Cool.

I recent read some research on rocket engine construction using plasma deposition,
and slowly altering the blend of materiel being deposited (on the interior of the
combustion chamber) so that the coating materiel doesn't flake off with thermal
expansion/cracking and thus increasing the useful engine life by orders of magnitude.

What's your baby going to be making? (if it's not too much to ask)

Originally posted by googlefudge
Cool.

I recent read some research on rocket engine construction using plasma deposition,
and slowly altering the blend of materiel being deposited (on the interior of the
combustion chamber) so that the coating materiel doesn't flake off with thermal
expansion/cracking and thus increasing the useful engine life by orders of magnitude.

What's your baby going to be making? (if it's not too much to ask)

Our company has been making thermal printheads for a long long time but the old way is called 'thick film' using techniques more akin to screen printing than semiconductor tech. We are developing a thin head version that is more in line with modern semiconductor techniques, uses way less of everything like silver, photoresist, gold, and the like. It turns out to be pretty complex to make these printheads this way but our thin film team is me and two material scientists, one has a Phd from Cornell and undergrad at MIT! Pretty heavy team.

Well I just got back from the meeting with the owner of the company, Om, and it went really well! I did in 3 months what the other folks who worked on the tool had not done in over a year. They notice stuff like that for sure

Originally posted by sonhouse
Our company has been making thermal printheads for a long long time but the old way is called 'thick film' using techniques more akin to screen printing than semiconductor tech. We are developing a thin head version that is more in line with modern semiconductor techniques, uses way less of everything like silver, photoresist, gold, and the like. It turns o ...[text shortened]... lks who worked on the tool had not done in over a year. They notice stuff like that for sure

Congrats!
Love it when hard work produces something!
Kelly

Originally posted by sonhouse
Our company has been making thermal printheads for a long long time but the old way is called 'thick film' using techniques more akin to screen printing than semiconductor tech. We are developing a thin head version that is more in line with modern semiconductor techniques, uses way less of everything like silver, photoresist, gold, and the like. It turns o ...[text shortened]... lks who worked on the tool had not done in over a year. They notice stuff like that for sure

I hope everything works out okay. Like my grandfather used to say,
"If the Lord is willing and the devil don't object."

Originally posted by RJHinds
I hope everything works out okay. Like my grandfather used to say,
"If the Lord is willing and the devil don't object."

So far it has worked out better than any other job I ever had. Too bad it had to come at the age of 70 and too bad it is 160 miles commute round trip. That's the only downside.

Originally posted by sonhouse
So far it has worked out better than any other job I ever had. Too bad it had to come at the age of 70 and too bad it is 160 miles commute round trip. That's the only downside.

Sounds like a great gig. And 70 is the new 55, I hear.

Originally posted by Soothfast
Sounds like a great gig. And 70 is the new 55, I hear.

Sure is with me anyway! When I play blitz and later tell them I am 7/10th of a century old, they are aghast and say I play like a young man!

Congrats Sonhouse!

Originally posted by shahenshah
Congrats Sonhouse!

Thanks! Job still going well.

Thats great!! well done
You smart cookie