Supporting bar for substrate cassette

Abstract

A plate cassette support bar that suppresses the increase in weight of the plate or substrate cassette that increases in size and lessens substrate or plate cassette vibration at the time of loading/unloading the substrates or plates to improve workability. The substrate or plate cassette has the end support parts that support the ends of the substrates or plates stored on both the right and left side of the substrate loading opening and the support bars that are fixed at the opposite side of the substrate loading opening, that have free ends on the substrate loading opening side, that are allotted in one line or multiple lines in the vertical direction, and that support the substrates to be stored between the above-mentioned end support parts of the cassette, and which stores multiple substrates horizontally in multiple levels in the vertical direction, the above-mentioned support bars are formed by the carbon fiber reinforced composite material containing 30% or more of highly elastic carbon fibers having a tensile modulus of 490-950 GPa, and are formed preferably into the shape of a hollow pipe, or more preferably into the shape of a taper that the tip part side becomes narrower.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the benefit of priority under 35 USC § 119 from Japan Application No. 2004-156755, Publication No. ______ entitled SUPPORTING BAR FOR SUBSTRATE CASSETTE, filed May 26, 2004. The disclosure of which is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein for all purposes. FIELD OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to a substrate storage cassette used in a manufacturing process of a glass substrate used for a liquid crystal display, for example. More particularly, the present invention relates to the central support component (support bar) allotted in each step of a cassette. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0003] The conventional liquid crystal display element has been manufactured by forming patterns, such as a picture element electrode, wiring, etc., on one side of the liquid crystal display element substrate, forming an orientation film by an application or adhesion processing on it, carrying out a rub...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0018] Pursuant to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a plate cassette support bar disclosed in the preceding paragraphs, characterized by comprising a heat-cured laminated structure containing a pre-preg sheet in which carbon fibers comprising high-elasticity carbon fibers of tensile modulus 490-950 GPa are unidirectionally oriented at 0±5° to a longitudinal direction of the plate cassette support bar.

[0019] Pursuant to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a plate cassette support bar disclosed in the preceding paragraphs, characterized by comprising a heat-cured laminated structure wherein a pre-preg sheet having a high-elasticity carbon fibers of tensile modulus 490-950 GPa are unidirectionally oriented at 0±5° to the longitudinal direction of the support bar, is laminated on the outer layer of a pre-preg sheet in which high-elasticity carbon fibers of tensile modulus of less than 490 GPa are unidirectionally oriented at 90±5° to the longitudinal direction of the support bar, and a cross pre-preg sheet containing reinforcing fibers is wrapped around the outermost layer.

[0020] Pursuant to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a plate cassette comprising edge support members that support the edges of the plates, each plate having a center, said edge support members being positioned on both a right side and a left side of a plate feed opening, and support bars that are attached at a side opposite the plate feed opening, the support bars having free ends opposite thereto, disposed in a line or in a multiplicity of lines in a vertical direction with the free ends at the plate feed opening, and that support said plates to control warping at the center of each of said plates, and which accommodates a multiplicity of plates in a horizontal manner in multiple levels in a vertical direction, wherein which plate cassette is characterized by the support bars being the support bar disclosed.

Problems solved by technology

And, when a substrate transfer fork, such as a robot performed transfer of a substrate, there were problems because the transfer fork could not smoothly carry the substrate because the transfer fork either contacted the bent portion of the central part of the glass substrate contained directly above the substrate inserted into the storage cassette, or the substrate was scratched.

Moreover, since the storage amount to a cassette fell sharply when the interval of the substrates is expanded in order to avoid contact of glass substrates, there was a problem of causing decline in production efficiency.

For this reason, with the conventional support bar using metals with low flexural rigidity, such as aluminum, the problem that it cannot suppress the warping at the glass substrate central part newly occurred.

Furthermore, since the material (mainly metal material, such as iron, stainless steel, aluminum, etc.) used for conventional support bars have a large density, it also caused the problem of a steep increase in weight of the storage cassette.

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