We had 3 fires in our fabs back in the late 90’s two at the same facility in Europe caused by two chemicals coming into contact and spontaneously combusting. IIRC the cause was put down to a leak on both cases. The other was in the US - San Antonio I think.
Took us over a year to recover in each case - not just fire related stuff and loss of production but customers and revenue as well.
‘Hello Mr. Customer, I regret to inform you our fab has had a major fire incident. No production for at least 4 months’
‘Whaaat?’
Took us over a year to recover in each case - not just fire related stuff and loss of production but customers and revenue as well.
‘Hello Mr. Customer, I regret to inform you our fab has had a major fire incident. No production for at least 4 months’
‘Whaaat?’
I understand fabs use HF as well as the evil ClF3
Sand Won’t Save You This Time | In the Pipeline
I love this quote from John Clarke's 'ignition' so much I bought the book!
”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
Sand Won’t Save You This Time | In the Pipeline
I love this quote from John Clarke's 'ignition' so much I bought the book!
”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that’s the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
I am not aware of any peer reviewed published research on the subject.
IOW, you won't face the challenges. Just another example of drive-by-shill.
No doubt, you're right. I guess I'm overly optimistic that they would learn from the failures of others and have better preventative processes in place and perhaps containment or systems designed for the hazard they know they have on-site. Nothing is 100% foolproof but 82 hours is a long time as you point out.
It may not be fair to compare the efforts at massive cutting-edge fabs like TSMC to what AKM can afford to do in house.
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Again it's always "easily", frequency response variation caused by speaker/cable interaction is well known, this would prove nothing. In fact a null difference test of the acoustic wavefront at the listener's location is virtually impossible to do so elimination of known audible effects would be almost impossible.
I would assume the actual tests would be done DB without the coach present. By the way pitch is easily measured and quantified, I don't see the analogy unless of course the effects of a capacitor or cable are also.
Well AKM are probably using a large (by modern standards) Analog process, which compared with EUV stuff that TMSC are using for the new iphone CPUs seems stone aged*, but still big $$$ by mere mortal standards. But they may use a secret sauce process which would take some time to replicate.
Or they could be super well planned, have a spare mask set in a vault and have a subby with the right process already setup. Time will tell.
*EUV just should not work, whatever Patrick says.
Scott,
Yes, agreed elimination of all audible effects would be almost impossible. I don't aim to eliminate all, but hope to minimize those I find most annoying to me.
Yes, also agreed DBT without coach present would be needed.
IMO, pitch is not necessarily so easily measured and quantified in a complex mix in the midst of some of orchestral music. In the case of reproduction system artifact listening it is not typically for pitch, but as with music students learning transcription it is mostly a function of learning to notice things that are not hard to hear, rather they can be hard not to automatically ignore. As with music, some people have some natural talent for hearing pitch and musical time, some other people naturally find some small reproduction artifacts noticeable and annoying.
Yes, agreed elimination of all audible effects would be almost impossible. I don't aim to eliminate all, but hope to minimize those I find most annoying to me.
Yes, also agreed DBT without coach present would be needed.
IMO, pitch is not necessarily so easily measured and quantified in a complex mix in the midst of some of orchestral music. In the case of reproduction system artifact listening it is not typically for pitch, but as with music students learning transcription it is mostly a function of learning to notice things that are not hard to hear, rather they can be hard not to automatically ignore. As with music, some people have some natural talent for hearing pitch and musical time, some other people naturally find some small reproduction artifacts noticeable and annoying.
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nasty chems
My wife worked for a plant making Zeibart undercarriage protectant back in 1979 in Model City, N.Y. near Niagara Falls, which is known for its pristine chemical free environment
While I was working on space lasers for DARPA, pumping deuterium, kerosene, and fluorine through electroformed nickel manifolds @ several hundred psi and 600F, I heard about the explosion of a "wax" plant 7 miles north of Bell Aerospace on the radio. Went outside, looked north, saw a column of black smoke extending miles into the sky.
Seems her "supervisor" decided that if some catalyst (a complex organo peroxide /hydrazine mix) was good, more would be better, dumped a bolus into the 1000 gallon vat of hot pressurized petroleum wax, and the former canning company went up in a giant "POOF!!!". She survived, but went on to work for the local hazardous waste dump for the State because it was a safer place.
My wife worked for a plant making Zeibart undercarriage protectant back in 1979 in Model City, N.Y. near Niagara Falls, which is known for its pristine chemical free environment
While I was working on space lasers for DARPA, pumping deuterium, kerosene, and fluorine through electroformed nickel manifolds @ several hundred psi and 600F, I heard about the explosion of a "wax" plant 7 miles north of Bell Aerospace on the radio. Went outside, looked north, saw a column of black smoke extending miles into the sky.
Seems her "supervisor" decided that if some catalyst (a complex organo peroxide /hydrazine mix) was good, more would be better, dumped a bolus into the 1000 gallon vat of hot pressurized petroleum wax, and the former canning company went up in a giant "POOF!!!". She survived, but went on to work for the local hazardous waste dump for the State because it was a safer place.
Must have been late 50's? Something that I regret losing is a complete hand analysis by the math wiz Alberto Bilotti of Dave Fullagar's uA741 on yellow ruled engineering paper. There were no simulators.
HF is one of the least concerning fab chemicals when it comes to fire hazard. It will etch your flesh to the bone, but will not burn. I lived for almost ten years in a semi fab, being in charge with device characterization and parameter extraction, plus some process engineering, and lived through a major fire. Organic solvents, hydrogen, oxygen, nitric acid fumans, sulphuric acid, toxic an pyrogenic gases are the major concerns, with the epitaxy unit being the major risk point. Any incipient fire is fuelled by the strong air flows required to keep the clean rooms particle free, most of the air is recirculated through local HEPA filters so you can quickly get a wet bench fire raining over your head.
This has become a sort of no win situation, I posted a simple measurement of ESS DAC misbehavior but it require a custom fixture. This turns off the objectivists who want to connect everything to an AP and push a button. The measurement of these things is not difficult or esoteric but it requires work, old fashion engineering. So now we have the gold standard, if the little AP logo does not appear in the corner the results are dismissed as not industry "accepted".
Thanks for that ref - I just got a copy!
I've seen some pretty awful lithium battery fires - they are nasty too.
Welp, I guess I'll work on a bunch of other things rather than the 4493 project I was hoping to start. Yowza.
Edit to add: not as much fab experience as Syn08, but the CVD reaction gasses were always the scariest for me. We don't know what went down at AKM, but it's decidedly unfortunate.
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This blog is so so so great as well. But definitely worth reading "Ignition".
Makes you wonder if the availability of such integrated test equipment is leading to more of an 'all the gear and no idea' approach to audio testing.
Both leave me in awe and fear of the chemists who work with things that they know want to go foom with the smallest provocation.
I did once meet a chemist who was missing half a finger and asked him what had happened. He proudly told me it was lost whilst working with Oppenheimer and he'd got cocky working with the chemicals for the detonator. This was pre-web so I couldn't prove this, but made a great story.