Frump Tester

ASML is a company within the semiconductor industry that creates advanced lithography systems. Their machines have a moving top stage and stationary bottom stage, connected by a 5” cable slab that carries power, signal, air, water, and nitrogen. These cables experience wear and failure and ASML devotes a lot of resources into study these failure modes for improvement. 

Frictional wear testers available commercially, like pin-on-disk testers, can only provide constant force against the tested surface. ASML’s cable slab competence, and the members of this capstone group, understand this to provide an insufficient representation of the wear experienced by ASML cable slabs, because of the initial impact followed by pure frictional drag associated with their motion profile in the company’s photolithography machines. This is the friction and bump referred to internally as a “frump.”

Our design challenge is to develop a compact, modular tester designed to isolate and reproduce friction & bump wear in a controlled and cost-efficient manner. Our system aims to provide a faster and more economical method for evaluating cable slab motion profiles and informing future design decisions. This design is a proof of concept.

The design will be modified and deployed at ASML facilities to evaluate cable slab performance in a controlled environment for future higher-speed and higher-impact testing systems. Key features for improvement include compatibility with ASML standard 5” cable slabs, integrating a cooling system for the motor, and refining the gearbox and motor assembly to reach up to 30G acceleration. 

The modular design enables rapid, side-by-side testing of multiple cable slab configurations, supporting efficient comparison and early stage screening. This approach allows for quick identification and prioritization of the most reliable designs while minimizing time and resource investment, when configuring and scaling for ASML testing systems.