A polishing system includes a support to hold a substrate having a substrate surface to be polished, a conditioning system for conditioning a polishing pad, the conditioning system comprising one or more conditioning heads, a movable support structure, and a carrier to hold a polishing pad. The carrier is suspended from the movable support structure, and the support structure is configured to move the carrier between the support to hold the substrate and the conditioning system.

A method is capable of monitoring the polishing surface of the polishing pad without removing the polishing pad from the polishing table. The method includes: conditioning the polishing surface of the polishing pad by causing a rotating dresser to oscillate on the polishing surface; measuring a height of the polishing surface when the conditioning of the polishing surface is performed; calculating a position of a measuring point of the height on a two-dimensional surface defined on the polishing surface; and repeating the measuring of the height of the polishing surface and the calculating of the position of the measuring point to create height distribution in the polishing surface.

Embodiments of the present disclosure provided herein include an apparatus and method for pad conditioning in a chemical mechanical polishing system. The apparatus includes a first conditioning head coupleable to a first pad conditioning disk disposed at a first head distance from the first conditioning head. The apparatus further includes a second a third conditioning head configured similarly to the first conditioning head. The apparatus includes a controller configured to receive sensor readings, determine whether the sensor readings are outside of a predetermined range, and adjust the first, second, and third head distances. A method of conditioning a polishing pad includes receiving sensor readings from at least one pad thickness sensor, determining if the sensor readings are outside of a predetermined range, and, upon determining that the sensor readings are outside of the predetermined range, adjusting a head distance of a conditioning head based on the sensor readings.

According to an aspect of the present disclosure, a substrate polishing apparatus including a turntable for supporting a polishing pad, a dresser that dresses the polishing pad, a dresser drive module that presses the dresser against the polishing pad and rotates the dresser, a support member that supports the dresser drive module, and a plurality of force sensors which are provided between the dresser drive module and the support member and each of which outputs information related to each of forces in three axis directions is provided.

The present invention relates to a grinding machine for grinding a surface of a workpiece, having at least one transport device for transporting a workpiece in a transport direction through the grinding machine, and at least one grinding tool (2), wherein the grinding tool (2) has at least one brush with grinding bristles,
wherein the grinding machine has a leveling unit.

Systems and methods are disclosed herein for adding surface features to grinding wheels. A laser may be directed substantially perpendicular to a grinding surface of a grinding wheel. The laser may be pulsed and may ablate material from the grinding surface. The laser may move relative to the grinding wheel in order to ablate shaped surface features into the grinding surface.

A dressing apparatus capable of bringing an overall dressing surface of a dresser into uniform sliding contact with a polishing surface of a polishing pad and capable of uniformly dressing the overall polishing surface of the polishing pad is disclosed. The dressing apparatus includes a dresser configured to rub against a polishing surface to dress the polishing surface that is used for polishing a substrate, a dresser shaft that applies a load to the dresser, at least one load-applying device configured to apply a downward load to a part of a peripheral portion of the dresser, and an operation controller configured to control operation of the load-applying device.

Methods for breaking-in new polishing pads of a double-side polishing apparatus for polishing substrates such as single crystal silicon wafers are disclosed. The methods may involve contacting the new polishing pads with a conditioning substrate such as a substate that includes diamonds at the surface of the substrate. Conditioning methods may also involve contacting the new polishing pad with sacrificial substrates.

A method for calibrating a dressing spindle of a machine tool having a main spindle arranged in a machine head and the dressing spindle arranged in the machining area, wherein a grinding tool can be mounted on the main spindle and a dressing tool can be mounted on the dressing spindle and the grinding tool and the dressing tool can be moved relatively to each other for dressing the grinding tool by the dressing tool.

In a method for pre-profiling a grinding tool, a device, in particular a gear grinding machine, for hard fine machining of workpieces and for pre-profiling grinding tools is provided, which includes a workpiece spindle for rotating a workpiece, a grinding spindle, which is feedable at least along an X-grinding-spindle-infeed-axis, for rotating a grinding tool, in particular a grinding worm or a grinding wheel, and a profiling device with a fixed first profiling plate. A grinding tool blank, in particular a grinding worm blank, is provided on the grinding spindle of the device. The device is brought into a profiling configuration. The grinding spindle is fed until the grinding tool blank is operatively connected to the first profiling plate. Finally, the grinding tool blank is pre-profiled.