108T

A carrier in this equipment class holds workpieces while a double-sided planetary lapping or polishing machine processes both faces at the same time. A carrier in this equipment class is part of the consumable and tooling set that determines how parts are presented to the machine during material removal and surface finishing.

Double-sided planetary lapping and polishing systems use carriers with openings that retain wafers or other flat parts between opposed processing surfaces. Planetary motion causes the carriers and the retained parts to traverse changing paths across the working surfaces, which promotes uniform stock removal and surface generation on both sides. Carrier design in this equipment class affects part spacing, support, transport through the process zone, and compatibility with the machine's drive geometry.

Double-sided lapping and polishing equipment is used in process flows that need flatness, parallelism, thickness control, or surface refinement on both sides of a part. Such equipment commonly sits after slicing or coarse shaping steps and before cleaning, inspection, or later finishing steps that prepare substrates for subsequent device fabrication or packaging operations.

Equipment in this class is used for wafers and other precision flat components that require controlled two-sided material removal or polishing. Typical uses include substrate preparation, thickness reduction, flatness improvement, and surface finishing for brittle or hard materials processed in disk form.