What kind of company is DISCO?
DISCO develops, manufactures, and sells precision machines and precision processing tools.
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DISCO precision machines
DISCO machines process workpieces to smaller and thinner sizes with precisely controlled dimensional limits.
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DISCO precision processing tools
DISCO tools are mainly blades/grinding wheels in which diamond particles are contained in a bond, such as resin. These tools are consumables to be installed to the machines and to process workpieces while rotating at high speed.
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DISCO processing
DISCO specializes in three types of processing essential for manufacturing: Kiru (cutting), Kezuru (grinding), and Migaku (polishing).
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DISCO Customers
DISCO’s current main customers are semiconductor and electrical components manufacturers, who manufacture products at their own factories using DISCO equipment and processing tools (blades/wheels).
The semiconductors and electrical components produced in customer factories are incorporated into end products, such as smartphones, which are then delivered to consumers.
What, how, and why are DISCO products used for processing?
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What?
Materials used in semiconductors and electronics parts that function in cell phones, computers, IC card, flat-screen TV, and automobiles. Types of these materials are varied including silicon, sapphire, and gallium arsenide (GaAs). They are mainly disk shaped such as silicon wafers and sapphire wafers.
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How?
Cutting into small pieces (dicing)
DISCO machines can control the size up to the level of a µm (micron or micrometer: one thousandth of millimeter), so that workpieces are cut into small die - sometimes the size of one side is less than 1 mm - while assuring their quality and suppressing cracking or chipping.
Precision cutting so that a cross-section of a strand of hair can be divided into 35 sections Thinning (grinding)
DISCO machines can make workpieces thinner to the 5 µm level. They also enable controlling thickness variation of a wafer whose diameter is 30 cm to within 1.5 µm. Incidentally, the thickness of the paper commonly used in copiers is about 100 µm.
So thin that you can see your hand at the backside Making a mirror-like glossy finish (polishing)
DISCO machines polish workpieces to the level where your face is reflected. This greatly improves materials resistance to breaking.
Shiny like a mirror -
Why?
In order to make digital products, such as PC and cell phones, smaller and thinner, it is necessary to reduce the size of parts that function inside. The smaller and thinner the size, the more parts installable in the same space and therefore the higher the functions. DISCO contributes to such evolution of digital products and creates comfort in your life.
Semiconductor Manufacturing Process, one of the fields that require DISCO products
At present, most of DISCO products have been introduced for the semiconductor manufacturing process involving highly advanced technologies of hundreds of companies in various forms. Consolidation of a wide range of engineering processes - mechanical, electrical, physics, chemical, and information processing - produces very high value-added semiconductors. The following explains the roles that DISCO machines play in the semiconductor manufacturing process.
Origin of the name "DISCO"
DISCO was originally a blade/grinding wheel manufacturer under the name of Dai-Ichi Seitosho CO., Ltd. In 1969, when the company, which had developed its business only domestically, started to export to the US, DISCO was used for the first time for easy pronunciation taking the initials of the corporate name. This name also contained our intention to easily assume what we handled since "disk" in English and "disco" in Spanish both express the shape of the blade or grinding wheel. At the beginning, DISCO was used only as the name of the US subsidiary, but the name of the headquarters was officially changed to DISCO Corporation in 1977.
