[time-nuts] AN/URQ13 reference AT cut crystal?

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

> On Feb 19, 2021, at 5:09 AM, Hal Murray <hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> magnus at rubidium.se said:
>> A lot of fascinating steps. It would be real fun if one would do a coarse in
>> which one would actually build a handful of crystals oneself, to learn the
>> basics, and measure them up. It would be a fun summer-coarse to do. 
> 
> Something like that isn't totally crazy.  Just mostly.  :)
> 
> A friend ran a lab course at the University of Colorado Boulder teaching 
> undergraduates how to make silicon chips.  IBM donated most of the gear when 
> they decommissioned a 2 inch fab line. Yes, that was many years ago.
> 
> One of his great stories was the day a guy wandered into the lab looking for a 
> job.  He used to run a fab line for HP and had decided to take a year off to 
> go back to school and get a masters.  Needless to say, he was hired.  That was 
> a good year.

Making chips as part of a EE program at the Masters level is not at all unusual.
It’s been pretty common for several decades. They even did that back when
I was in school ….

> 
> 
> I assume the number of crystal lines is pretty small so getting a whole setup 
> as a donation seems unlikely.

Donation is very likely, finding anybody interested on the week it has to go … 
not so much. There is very little interest in some of this stuff.

>  I could imagine being able to "rent" a factory 
> for long enough to run a course if a company is going out of business or 
> something like that.

Normally the building is cleared of “valuable” gear as part of an auction 
process. That might be done in two or three phases. The gear from the
front end of the line might be auctioned while the back end is still making
product. 

>  It would probably be too expensive but stranger things 
> have happened.
> 
> If a class like that ever happened, I wonder what fraction of the class would 
> be curious time-nuts rather

To be interesting to Time Nuts, you probably need it to be a precision 
crystal plant. 

> than serious students planning to get a job 
> building crystals.

Ummm ….. errrr …. who? :)

The three to five folks that get into this each year (as trained individuals) 
already come through existing degree programs. The vast majority of 
people who work in crystal plants have no job specific training. They
*might* have a physics degree ...

> 
> Just a set of lectures on building crystals with good pictures of factory gear 
> would be fun.

Not sure who you would get to do those lectures. If they all fly in and
have to come up with the course work as part of this, you probably could
buy a pretty nice car for the price of that month long course. 

Bob

> 
> -----------
> 
> jim at luxfamily.com said:
>> Getting small feature sizes might be a challenge - when we did it where  i
>> used to work, they did photo reduction onto a photoresist covered  substrate.
>> I wonder if someone has a laser rig that could programmed to  "draw" the
>> pattern on the resist at the right scale. 
> 
> Is electron-beam lithography a possibility?  I remember smiling when I read 
> that they turned down the power and used it as an electron microscope to find 
> markers so they knew where the chip was actually located.  Can you run up the 
> power on a normal electron microscope to get a useful write time?
> 
> 
> -- 
> These are my opinions.  I hate spam.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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