GT Advanced Technologies, a diversified technology company with innovative crystal growth equipment and solutions for the global solar, LED, and electronics industries, today announced an exclusive distribution agreement with Intego GmbH that allows GT to market and sell Intego’s automated sapphire inspection tools, including its upcoming SIRIUS slab and brick inspection tool and a sapphire cover inspection tool currently in development. Expected to increase the amount of yielded material from sapphire boules, the new inspection tools will also approve the throughput of material during the inspection process which, in turn, will lower the cost of growing and fabricating sapphire for a variety of applications.
Additionally, the inspection tools enable full material tracking through linking inspection data with slab and brick layout to downstream computer numerical control (CNC) machine tools. These tools are expected to benefit today’s LED manufacturing industry and also help create high volume, cost-sensitive applications such as cover screen material for mobile and touch screen devices. Specific terms of the agreement have yet to be released.
“Intego is a recognized leader in vision systems and material inspection in a number of industries and we are pleased to be working with them to bring automated sapphire inspection tools to market,” commented Tom Gutierrez, GT’s president and CEO. “The agreement gives us the ability to offer the LED and mobile device industries important products that will lower cost and increase productivity in their sapphire supply chains. Automating the sapphire material inspection process will deliver more repeatable and consistent results that drive greater throughput. This will help to lower the cost of sapphire for high volume applications such as cover material for mobile and touch screen devices.”
Developed by Intego in collaboration with GT’s engineering team, The SIRIUS sapphire inspection tool was designed using the capabilities of GT’s sapphire R&D facility in Salem, Massachusetts. The SIRIUS tool, using advanced sapphire inspection techniques and optimization algorithms, can quickly provide an optimized core or material layout on a sapphire slab and transfer that pattern to the CNC machine tool. When fully developed, the sapphire screen inspection tool will efficiently perform 2D and 3D inspection of sapphire screens and windows to help characterize and track each piece throughout all downstream production steps. Through its global service and support resources, GT will continue to fully support these tools in the field.
For more information on GT Advanced Technologies, visit www.gtat.com
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