A method of conducting a material removal operation using a grinding system including moving an abrasive article relative to a workpiece, detecting a change in a dimension of the abrasive article during moving, and reducing resonance vibrations in the grinding system.

A polishing apparatus includes a polishing station to hold a polishing pad, a carrier head to hold a substrate in contact with a polishing pad at the polishing station, a camera positioned to capture an image of a lower surface of a consumable part when the consumable part moves away from the polishing pad, and a controller configured to perform an image processing algorithm on the image to determine whether the consumable part is damaged. The consumable part can be a retaining ring on a carrier head, or a conditioner disk on a conditioner head.

A polishing system includes an end effector and a controller. The end effector includes a polishing arm, a motor, and a tool head. The motor includes a rotatable shaft. The tool head extends along a lengthwise axis between and to an inner end and a tip end. The inner end is disposed on the polishing arm at the motor. The tool head includes a belt tensioner and a roller. The belt tensioner is configured to bias the tip end outward from the inner end along the lengthwise axis. The tool head is configured to retain an abrasive belt extending between the rotatable shaft and the roller. The controller is configured to measure a usage of the abrasive belt for polishing one or more workpieces and compare the measured usage to a threshold usage value to identify an end-of-life condition is present or absent for the abrasive belt.

A dressing board having, on a surface, a two-dimensional code including information relating to properties of the dressing board and a barcode including identification information associated with the information relating to the properties is provided. Furthermore, there is provided a cutting apparatus including a determining part that determines whether or not the properties of the dressing board read out from an information registration part based on the identification information match the kind of dressing board suitable for dressing of a cutting blade.

To measure an amount of abrasion of a polishing pad with a simple structure.

A substrate processing apparatus 1000 includes: a table 100 for supporting a substrate WF with a surface to be polished facing upward; a pad holder 226 for holding a polishing pad 222 for polishing the substrate WF supported by the table 100; an elevating mechanism 260 for moving up and down the polishing pad 222 held to the pad holder 226; and an abrasion amount measurement member 270 configured to lower the polishing pad 222 by the elevating mechanism 260 and measure the amount of abrasion of the polishing pad 222 based on a value correlated with a behavior of the elevating mechanism 260 until the polishing pad contacts a reference surface.

In a surface grinding method in which a grinding wheel is dressed with a dressing board on a chuck table by advancing the grinding wheel from a dressing start position and a workpiece on the chuck table is ground by advancing the grinding wheel, the dressing start position is calculated by measuring a thickness of the dressing board and a thickness of the grinding wheel, and the grinding start position is calculated by measuring the thickness of the grinding wheel after the dressing of the grinding wheel with the dressing board.

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.