As a software engineer, I don’t often get to go to trade shows, but Semicon West 2010 was one I could not miss. After working intensely over the last few months with the Palomar engineering team on the 3800 Die Bonder and preparing to show it to the world at SEMICON…attending, if only for opening day, was something I needed to do for myself. Call it professional satisfaction. With that said, I want to share some of my experiences and impressions of Semicon 2010, Palomar's booth, and the showing of the new 3800 die bonding machine. The last time I went to Semicon was in the late 1990s when Palomar launched its CBT 6000 (which later became the current 8000 Wire Bonder).
Quick Bit
Semicon 2010 was held at Moscone Center in downtown San Francisco. There are three main exhibit halls, Moscone South, Moscone North, and Moscone South. Palomar's booth was in the North hall which was for the "Test, Assembly, and Packaging" segment of the semiconductor equipment manufacturing and supply industries. The South hall was for "Wafer Processing" and the West hall was for the Solar industry. I visited the South and North halls, but not the West hall.
Monday 7/12 – Set up
The exhibit halls were only open to the exhibitors and the various convention center support people such as electricians, general labor, security, etc. Like the few other conventions I have been to on setup day, it was an organized chaos. There were forklifts buzzing by with large crates, laborers putting down carpet, electricians setting up power drops and exhibitors semi-desperately trying to get all their stuff placed in their booth and working to some level.
Tuesday 7/13 – Opening Day
As 10 am rolled around, I went out to walk the floor and look at what the other vendors had going on.
Just before lunch, I walked by the Palomar booth and found it was jammed with people. Every Palomar person was talking with one or two visitors, and some as yet unengaged visitors in the walkway were watching the machine (still running its demo) or the process camera live the 46” video display. It looked crazy! Meanwhile the booths around Palomar's were dead in comparison. 
Palomar's booth on Tuesday, July 13th
I walked over to the South hall, where the "Wafer Processing" related things were going on. After walking the whole floor, it seemed that very few vendors had any kind of significant machinery on display. Not knowing really anything about wafer processing myself, most of the booths weren't of any real interest to me. There was one booth that had a demo of an air-bearing table seemingly made of granite with small metal rails - it had some kind of wafer handling arm on it and it was whisper quiet from what I could tell (although the hall was pretty noisy). Despite the South hall being bigger than the North hall, it seemed that there were less people total in the South hall - maybe less people interested in wafer processing?
On Tuesday, the exhibit floor closed at 5pm. But, if you are REALLY interested, you were able to hang out a bit longer. This was evident in what I soon saw back at the Palomar booth: one last gentleman was at the excitedly asking Mike Artimez, our on-site engineer, a bunch of questions. He seemed new to the Palomar product line, so he was totally focused on looking at the 3800 machine and not really paying attention to anything else. Far after 5 PM, he looked up and realized that almost all the other visitors and large portion of the exhibitors themselves had already left the floor. Surprised and still excited, he said his goodbyes and left, saying he'd be back tomorrow to talk some more.
Palomar's Design Engineer Mike Artimez shows an interested visitor the new 3800 Die Bonder
An Engineer’s Dream
Having spoken to many different people who have attended Semicon for years and decades on end, this year was certainly an “up” year. As for the show itself, overall, it was clearly a success. More than anything, I reached the height of “professional satisfaction” in watching a great number of engineers and industry professionals watch the new 3800 die bonder with intense interest and excitement. All the hard work that was put into the 3800 by so many people at Palomar paid off in simply watching the sparkle in the eye of each visitor when watching the machine run. As an engineer, to create a product that other people find useful and valuable is most definitely the ultimate payoff. I feel lucky to have been there.
Here is to growth and prosperity for all semiconductor companies worldwide!
-Raul Rathmann