9000 Fine Wire Wedge Bonder

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Katie Finney
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13 January, 2015

Launch of the Seventh Wedge Bonder

Last week, Palomar Technologies announced the launch of its 7^th wedge bonder: the 9000 Fine Wire Wedge Bonder. Palomar/Hughes started designing and manufacturing wedge bonders in the early 1980s for the aerospace and defense industries. Later, these machines were used for a wider array of applications beyond just military, including medical devices, RF/Wireless packages, automotive sensor systems, and optoelectronic systems and components. This further developed Palomar’s expertise in fine wire Al and Au wedge bonding.

Built on Proven Palomar Platforms

A unique aspect of the 9000 is that it is state-of-the-art and built upon proven aspects of other Palomar platforms. It is far easier to learn a new machine when the logic and functionality is fundamentally the same across a variety of platforms. For example, the ergonomic user interface and clam shell design was adapted from the 3800 Die Bonder and the i2Gi interactive GUI software came from the 8000i Wire Bonder/Ball (Stud) Bumper. The 9000 wedge bonder has a cantilever design which is the same as the Palomar 8000i wire bonder, 3800 die bonder, and 6500 die bonder - a design which has been proven over decades.

3800 Die Bonder with automated material handling

Unique Features

During our development of the 9000 Wedge Bonder, customer feedback showed that other platforms on the market had designs that caused wire and/or ribbon twisting (due to design of the bondhead and despooler). Our engineering team solved this problem by putting the despooler on theta.

Bondhead despooler rides on theta

An important feature to customers was the ability to have “no touch down” required when transferring a program from one machine to another. This is especially important for customers working with fragile devices.

To have program repeatability in a factory environment with multiple machines was a feature we designed in as well. When applying the same program to multiple machines there is no need for parameter adjustment. The Palomar 9000 calibrates vision, force, ultrasonics, tool offset, theta runout, and other characteristics to make the program portable across machines.

Download these resources for more information:

9000 Data Sheet