TWI564521B - Clean room with automatic warehouse - Google Patents

Description

Automatic warehouse for clean rooms

The invention relates to an automatic warehouse for a clean room.

In an automatic warehouse for clean rooms, a fan filter unit is provided on the back of the cabinet to supply clean air to the inlet and outlet of the articles. The power required for the supply of clean air is large, so in order to reduce the running cost and the amount of CO ₂ emissions, it is necessary to reduce the power consumption. In the prior art, the related art is disclosed in JP-A-2009-184794A, which discloses the content of the supply of clean air according to the speed of the stacker crane. However, the number of revolutions of the fan in the fan filter unit can be changed only slowly, and it is difficult to change the number of revolutions following the speed of the stacker crane. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the power consumption of the fan filter unit with simpler control.

[Previous Technical Literature] [Patent Literature]

[Patent Document 1] JP2009-184794A

An object of the present invention is to reduce the power consumption of a fan filter unit by simple control.

The invention relates to an automatic warehouse for a clean room, characterized in that it comprises: a cabinet, a storage item thereof; a plurality of fan filter units for blowing clean air toward the inlet and outlet of the articles in the article cabinet; a transfer device in the warehouse, which transports the articles in the automatic warehouse; and a controller that controls the fan filter unit and a transfer device in the warehouse; and the controller has a function of dividing the article cabinet into a cleaning area and an energy-saving area to which the storage location of the article belongs, and so that the amount of clean air supplied to the cleaning area is larger than the energy-saving area. Control the above plurality of fan filter units.

In the present invention, the cleaning area is determined in such a manner as to include the storage location of the article, and the amount of air supplied from the fan filter unit is increased as compared with other energy-saving areas. If the amount of air supplied from the fan filter unit is controlled in the area unit in this manner, the power consumption of the fan filter unit can be reduced while supplying sufficient clean air to the desired area. Moreover, even if the responsiveness of the rotation speed control of the fan is low, it can be controlled, and since it is a unit of area, the control is relatively simple.

Preferably, the item cabinet is pre-divided into a cleaning area and an energy-saving area before determining the storage location of the item, and the controller has a function of determining the storage location of the item from the self-cleaning area. If the item cabinet is pre-divided into a cleaning area and an energy-saving area, and the storage location is determined from the cleaning area, the amount of air supplied by the clean air can be reduced as a whole.

Preferably, the article cabinet has a wall spaced between the inlet and outlet of the article, and the controller is configured to divide the cabinet into a cleaning area by using the wall as a boundary. With energy saving areas. The airflow between the cleaning area and the energy-saving area is limited by the wall, and the controller divides the cleaning area and the energy-saving area by the wall, so that the cleanliness of the cleaning area can be maintained to a high degree. It is preferable to provide a plurality of walls, and it is preferable to change the division of the cleaning area and the energy-saving area to three or more levels. For example, if a wall is provided in two places of the article cabinet and the article cabinet is divided into, for example, three areas, it is possible to provide the first energy saving in which the area is always divided into the cleaning area and the division is changed to the cleaning area when the storage amount of the article increases. When the area and the amount of storage of the item are further increased, the division is changed to the second energy-saving area of the cleaning area.

Moreover, preferably, the in-store conveying device is a stacking crane, the article cabinet has a plurality of articles in the upper and lower directions, and the inlet and outlet of the articles above the article cabinet are divided into a cleaning area, and the articles below the article cabinet are The exit is divided into energy-saving areas. The import and export of items under the goods cabinet is easily affected by the airflow raised by the stacker crane, and the inlet and outlet of the items above the goods cabinet are not easily affected by the raised airflow. Therefore, if the inlet and outlet of the article above the article cabinet is set as the cleaning area, the cleanliness of the cleaning area can be easily maintained to a high degree.

Preferably, the controller divides the area including the movement start position (starting position) from the conveyance device in the warehouse to the target position into a cleaning area. In this way, even if the amount of air blown from the fan filter unit cannot be changed following the position of the transport device in the warehouse, the amount of clean air blown to the desired area can be increased.

Hereinafter, preferred embodiments for carrying out the invention are shown. The scope of the present invention should be determined in accordance with the description of the scope of the claims and the description of the specification and the known art in the field.

[Examples]

The embodiment and its variants are shown in Figures 1-8. 1 to 3 show an initial embodiment, in which 2 is an automatic warehouse for a clean room, for example, including a pair of left and right goods cabinets 4, 4, which are separated along the length direction of the automatic warehouse 2 and the vertical direction. Import and export of multiple items. For example, a gas permeable space 8 is provided on the back side of the article cabinets 4, 4, and a fan filter unit (FFU, Fan Filter Unit) 9 is provided, for example, at each of the article inlets and outlets 6, respectively. In FIG. 2, one FFU 9 is provided for each article inlet and outlet, but a plurality of FFUs 9 may be provided for each article inlet/outlet 6 or one FFU 9 may be provided for a plurality of article inlets and outlets 6. When the article 18 or the like is taken out from the back side of the article inlet and outlet 6, the FFU 9 is placed, for example, on the side surface, the upper surface, and the like of the article inlet and outlet. A cargo box support member 20 is provided at each of the article inlets and outlets 6 to support the bottom surface of the casing 18. Moreover, the item cabinet support 20 covers only a portion of the bottom surface of the box 18, allowing airflow to pass through the inlets and outlets 6, 6 above and below the item cabinet 4. Furthermore, only one item cabinet 4 may be provided.

The space between the goods cabinets 4 and 4 is the moving space 10, and the stacking crane 12 moves, 14 is the track for its movement. The stacker crane 12 is provided with a lifting platform 16 and conveys articles such as a box 18 for accommodating a substrate of the flat panel display. Furthermore, the types of articles to be transported are arbitrary, and for example, semiconductor wafers and masks can be transported. Such as boxes, pharmaceuticals, etc. Further, the lifting table 16 is provided with a transfer device (not shown) such as a slide fork or a SCARA (Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm). The stacker 12 is an example of a transfer device in a warehouse, and is not limited thereto. If the article is divided into the articles 4, 4 by the unit of the article inlet and outlet 6 in the height direction, a track may be provided in each of the article cabinets 4, 4 to move the transporting trolley in each segment.

In the embodiment of FIGS. 1 to 3, the article cabinets 4, 4 include, for example, upper and lower sections, and the upper section is divided into the cleaning zone 22, and the lower section is divided into the energy saving zone 24. In the case where the article cabinets 4 and 4 are three or more stages, for example, two or one of the upper sides is a cleaning area, and one or two of the remaining lower sides are referred to as energy-saving areas. The division of the cleaning area 22 and the energy-saving area 24 need not be fixed. If the number of storage boxes 18 in the automatic warehouse 2 is increased, one or the entire energy-saving area 24 may be set as the cleaning area 22. Further, if the number of storages of the cartridges 18 is reduced, one of the cleaning regions 22 may be set as the energy-saving region 24.

In some cases, the cabinet support 20 of the energy-saving area 24 is contaminated by dust, and if it is changed to the cleaning area 22, the dust can be removed by supplying the clean air for a certain period of time or more from the FFU 9. In the embodiment, the cleaning area 22 is controlled as the storage location regardless of the box (solid box) or the empty box for accommodating the substrate, but only the real box can be stored in the cleaning area 22, and the empty box is stored into the storage box. Energy saving area 24. In this case, sometimes the empty box placed in the energy-saving area 24 will It is contaminated by dust, and it is preferable to remove the dust by the clean air before moving to the cleaning area 22 and storing it for a specific time or longer.

Reference numeral 26 denotes a controller that controls the automatic warehouse 2, in particular, the crane control unit 27, and controls the stacker 12, and controls the FFU 9 by the fan filter unit control unit 28. As a method of dividing the cleaning area 22 and the energy-saving area 24, the entrance and exit of the article in the upper section of the article cabinet 4 is designated as the cleaning area 22, and when it is not necessary to store the cassette 18 in the lower stage, the entire lower portion is set as the energy-saving area 24. However, if it is necessary to produce the lower storage case 18, part or all of the energy saving area 24 is changed to the cleaning area 22.

The controller 26 includes means for storing which of the items 4 of the article cabinet 4 the storage and storage of the cassette 18 is stored. The self-cleaning area 22 determines the storage location of the cassette when the controller 26 loads the cassette 18 from the outside of the automated warehouse 2 or changes the position of the cassette 18 inside the automated warehouse 2. Further, the fan filter unit control unit 28 increases the amount of air blown into the clean area 22 by the amount of rotation of the fan provided in the FFU, and the amount of air blown in the energy-saving area 24 is larger than that in the energy-saving area 24. In the extreme case, the air supply amount of the clean air in the energy saving area 24 can also be set to zero.

In this way, since the cleaning area 22 can be kept clean, the box 18 can be stored in a clean environment while reducing the amount of air to be supplied and the power consumption of the clean air. Further, since the amount of air blown from the FFU 9 is controlled in units of 22 and 24, the control is simple. In particular, there is no need to follow the position and moving speed of the stacker 12 to change the air supply from the FFU9. the amount. Therefore, the responsiveness to the control of the blow volume of the FFU 9 can also be low.

4 and 5, the automatic warehouse 32 for the clean room of the second embodiment is the same as the embodiment of Figs. 1 to 3 except for the specific points, and the same reference numerals denote the same. 34 is a wall having no gas permeability and is disposed along the vertical direction, and the moving space 10 is removed, and the airflow in the left-right direction in the automatic warehouse 32 in FIGS. 4 and 5 is blocked. Moreover, the article cabinets 4, 4 are divided into a cleaning area 36 and an energy saving area 38 based on the position of the wall 34.

For example, in the case of Figs. 4 and 5, there are two article cabinets 4, 4, and each of the article cabinets 4 is provided with two walls 34, 34. Therefore, the article cabinets 4, 4 are divided into six regions as a whole, for example, two of the zones are set as the cleaning zone 36, and the other zones are set as the energy-saving zone 38. Further, in FIGS. 4 and 5, the cleaning regions 36 and 36 are disposed to face each other, but this need not be the case. Further, the division of the energy-saving area 38 and the cleaning area 36 is changed in the area unit partitioned by the wall 34 in accordance with the number of the cassettes 18 housed in the automatic storage 32. In this way, the cleaning area 36 and the energy saving area 38 can be divided according to the storage amount of the cartridge 18, and only the cleaning area 36 can be concentrated.

In each of the embodiments, the amount of air blown from the FFU 9 is determined based on the division of the cleaning areas 22 and 36 and the energy-saving areas 24 and 38, and the position and speed of the stacker 12 are not reflected in the control of the amount of blown air. The reason for this is that the amount of air supplied by the FFU 9 cannot be rapidly switched, and the control is simplified. FIG. 6 shows a modification in which the amount of air blown from the FFU 9 is changed in accordance with the speed of the stacker crane 12. The stack crane 12 is moved by the crane control unit 27 Before the start of the movement, the controller 26 increases the amount of blown air Q for both the clean area and the energy-saving area. Then, after the air supply amount Q is increased, the movement of the stacker crane 12 is started. After the stacker 12 is stopped, the airflow amount Q from the FFU 9 is also lowered until the air lifted by the movement is discharged from the exhaust port (not shown). In this control, since the position and speed of the stacking crane 12 are not reflected in the air supply amount control, it is not necessary to change the air supply amount Q while following the position of the stacker crane. Therefore, the cleanliness can be maintained to a high degree with a simple control. However, since it is necessary to wait for the supply air amount Q of the FFU 9 to increase before starting the movement of the stacker 12, a delay occurs.

Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 show an automatic warehouse 42 for a clean room according to a third embodiment, and the same as those of the embodiment of Figs. 1 to 3 except for the points which are specifically indicated, and the same reference numerals denote the same. In the embodiment of FIGS. 1 to 3, the article cabinets 4, 4 are divided into an upper layer and a lower layer, and the upper layer is set as the cleaning area 22, and the lower layer is set as the energy saving area 24. On the other hand, in the embodiment of FIGS. 7 and 8, the area including the movement start position (From position) to the target position (To (arrival) position) from the stacker 12 is set as cleaning. In the area 44, the other areas are set as the energy saving area 46. The movement start position and the target position are determined for each movement of the stacking crane 12, and when the stacker 12 does not move and only the lifting platform 16 is lifted and lowered, the movement start position and the target position are set to be the same. position. Further, the movement start position and the target position are moved in the left-right direction of FIG. 7, that is, the movement of the stacker 12 The cleaning area 44 is set to a range in which a specific range and a range of the degree of entry and exit of the article are added. It is not necessary to make the range in front of the moving direction the same as the range in the rear.

The air supply amount Q of the FFU 9 in the cleaning area 44 is indicated by a solid line in Fig. 8, and the air supply amount in the energy saving area is indicated by a broken line, and the air supply amount is fixed. The cleaning area 44 and the energy-saving area 46 are initially provided with a small amount of air supply, and the amount of air blown in the cleaning area is increased before the stacking crane 12 is started. This period must be, for example, about 10 to 20 seconds. If the air supply volume of the FFU 9 is increased to a specific value in the cleaning area, the stacker is started. Then, after the stack crane stops at the target position To, it waits until the delay time until the moving wind stops, and reduces the amount of air blown in the cleaning area 44. One of the causes of the contamination in the automatic warehouse 42 is the movement of the stacker crane 12. In the embodiment of Figs. 7 and 8, the range affected by the influence is partially set as the cleaning area 44 and the clean air is concentratedly supplied. Since the FFU 9 takes time to change the amount of blown air, the amount of blown air is increased to a specific value before the start of the stacker crane 12. Further, since the raised air remains after the stack crane 12 is stopped, the air supply amount is maintained at a high value until the air is removed.

In the embodiment, an example in which the article cabinet 4 is divided up and down, an example in which the article cabinet 4 is divided by the wall 34, and an example in which the article cabinet 4 is divided based on the moving range of the stacker 12 is exemplified, but These divisions can be combined. For example, in the embodiment of Figures 4 and 5, the inlet and outlet of the article above the specific range separated by the wall 34 may also be set as the cleaning zone. Also, in Figure 1 to Figure 3 In the embodiment, the specific range of the movement start position From and the target position To of the stacking crane 12 may be set as the cleaning area.

The following effects can be obtained in the examples.

(1) Since the clean air is concentratedly supplied to the cleaning areas 22, 36, and 44, the power consumption of the FFU 9 can be reduced.

(2) As in the respective embodiments of FIGS. 1 to 5, if the cleaning regions 22 and 36 are set regardless of the movement range of the stacking crane 12, it may take time to change the air blowing amount of the FFU 9. Therefore, compared with the case where the air blow amount is constantly changed according to the position or speed of the stacking crane 12, it is possible to obtain a reliable effect with simple control.

(3) If the cleaning area 44 is determined in accordance with the movement range of the stacking crane 12, it is sufficient to control it, and it is possible to take time even if the air volume of the FFU 9 is changed.

(4) In the case of (3), if the amount of air blown is increased before the start of the stacker crane 12, even if the amount of blown air is changed, the FFU 9 that takes time is less likely to cause contamination. Further, if the air supply amount is maintained at a high value during the delay time after the stop of the stacker crane, the influence of the air raised by the movement of the stacker crane 12 can be avoided.

Other embodiments

Although an embodiment of the present invention has been described above, the present invention is not limited to the above embodiment, and various modifications may be made without departing from the scope of the invention. Kind of change.

In particular, the plurality of embodiments and modifications described in the present specification may be arbitrarily combined as needed.

2, 32, 42‧‧‧ automatic warehouse

4‧‧‧Articles cabinet

6‧‧‧ Import and export of goods

8‧‧‧ breathable space

9‧‧‧Fan Filter Unit (FFU)

10‧‧‧Mobile space

12‧‧‧Head height crane

14‧‧‧ Track

16‧‧‧Elevator

18‧‧‧ box

20‧‧‧Article cabinet support

22, 36, 44‧‧‧ cleaning area

24, 38, 46‧ ‧ energy-saving areas

26‧‧‧ Controller

27‧‧‧ Crane Control Department

28‧‧‧Fan filter unit control unit

34‧‧‧ wall

From‧‧‧Mobile start position

Q‧‧‧Air supply

To‧‧‧target location

Figure 1 is a plan view of the main part of the automated warehouse of the embodiment.

Figure 2 is a front elevational view of the main part of the automated warehouse of the embodiment.

Figure 3 is a side elevational view of the main part of the automated warehouse of the embodiment.

Figure 4 is a side elevational view of the main part of the automatic warehouse of the second embodiment.

Fig. 5 is a plan view showing the main part of the automatic warehouse of the second embodiment.

Fig. 6 is a waveform diagram showing a modification of changing the air blowing amount of the fan filter unit in accordance with the speed of the stacker crane, 1) showing the speed of the stacker crane, and 2) indicating the air blowing amount of the fan filter unit.

Fig. 7 is a plan view showing the main part of the automatic warehouse of the third embodiment.

Fig. 8 is a waveform diagram showing the air blowing amount of the fan filter unit in the third embodiment, 1) showing the speed of the stacker crane, and 2) indicating the air blowing amount of the fan filter unit.

2‧‧‧Automatic warehouse

12‧‧‧Head height crane

18‧‧‧ box

22‧‧‧Clean area

24‧‧‧Energy saving area

Claims (4)

The utility model relates to an automatic warehouse for a clean room, which is characterized in that it comprises: an item cabinet, which accommodates articles; a plurality of fan filter units for blowing clean air to the inlet and outlet of articles of the article cabinet; and a transfer device in the warehouse, which is in the automatic warehouse And a controller that controls the fan filter unit and the in-store conveyance device; and the controller has the function of dividing the article cabinet into a cleaning area and an energy-saving area to which the item is located, so as to be cleaned The air purifying air volume of the area is greater than the energy saving area to control the plurality of fan filtering units, and the item cabinet is pre-divided into a cleaning area and an energy saving area before determining the storage position of the item, and the controller has a self-cleaning area to determine the item. The function of the storage location. An automatic warehouse for a clean room according to the first aspect of the invention, wherein the article cabinet has a wall spaced apart between the inlet and outlet of the article, and the controller is configured to divide the cabinet into a clean area by using the wall as a boundary Energy saving area. An automatic warehouse for a clean room according to the first aspect of the patent application, wherein the above-mentioned warehouse internal conveying device is a stacking crane, and the above-mentioned article cabinet has a plurality of articles import and export along the up and down direction, and the articles above the goods cabinet Import and export is divided into clean areas, and the import and export of goods under the goods cabinet is divided into energy-saving region. An automatic warehouse for a clean room according to the first aspect of the invention, wherein the controller divides an area including a movement start position from the conveyance device in the warehouse to a target position into a cleaning area.