Gasket Retainer Aperture Design for Damage-Resistant Alignment
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing gasket retainers for fluid pathway joints in semiconductor manufacturing are prone to handling damage due to sharp corners and require close dimensional tolerances, making them delicate and difficult to manufacture.
Innovation Solution
A flexible, flat sheet retainer with specially shaped apertures that capture gaskets without sharp corners, allowing for easy handling and manufacturing, featuring oval, elliptical, D-shaped, or triangular apertures that engage gaskets and fasteners without convexity, enabling secure and leak-free fluid pathway joining.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If traditional gasket retainers with sharp corners are used, then gasket alignment is achieved, but handling damage occurs and manufacturing precision is difficult to maintain
Solution Approach 1:
The retainer aperture is designed with a smoothly non-convex periphery featuring rounded corners instead of sharp angles. This curvature eliminates stress concentration points that cause handling damage while maintaining the ability to properly align and capture the gasket during assembly operations
2Manufacturing precision
If traditional gasket retainers with close dimensional tolerances are used, then gasket alignment precision is achieved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The retainer features an asymmetric, smoothly non-convex periphery with rounded corners that provides inherent gasket alignment through its unique shape. This asymmetric design creates a single correct orientation for gasket insertion, ensuring precise alignment without requiring tight dimensional tolerances on multiple features
Solution Approach 2:
The design transitions from sharp-cornered geometric shapes to smoothly rounded peripheries, changing the geometric parameters to eliminate stress concentrations. This parameter change maintains alignment functionality while significantly improving manufacturability and reducing tolerance requirements
3Strength
If retainers with sharp corners are used, then structural integrity is maintained, but handling damage occurs
Solution Approach 1:
All corners and edges of the retainer aperture are replaced with smooth curves and rounded transitions. This eliminates sharp geometric features that act as stress concentration points, preventing crack initiation during handling while maintaining overall structural integrity through continuous, smooth material flow
Data Source
AI summary
A gasket retainer that is absent sharp corners, has apertures of reasonable dimensional tolerance, and may be conveniently made by a variety of manufacturing processes. The retainer is made from thin flat springy material that readily returns to form after slight bending. Representative gasket capturing apertures are of smoothly non-convex outline with major dimension sufficiently large to allow passage of a ring shaped gasket turned on edge and minor dimension sufficiently small to engage, on approximately opposite circular segments that each engage along less than one third of a gasket circumference, a cavity or groove on the outside diameter periphery of the gasket turned flat parallel to the retainer material sheet. Fasteners may be retained by similar apertures.