October 29, 2008

Back in town

The auction was a blast. I wish I had another 2,000 Sq. Ft. in the DaveCave(TM) and a spare couple thousand bucks. A very nice Scanning Electron Microscope went for $650. And this puppy:
Masked ion beam nano scale lithography fabrication system w/30"x24" high vacuum chamber, 40' SS high vacuum beam drift tube, 6'x6'x6' electrostatic isolation cage, 6" diffusion pump w/cold trap, gate valve, stiff box sample holder, precision nano positioning stage, nano position controller computer & interface, magnet beam switching power supply, ion source controller, Faraday cup, air cushion mechanical isolation table, ion source & ion extractor, beam accelerator stage, beam bending/switching electromagnet, power supplies, transformer, diffusion pumps
went for $1,000 -- it was about 500K to 750K worth of components being sold for less than scrap value. I took some photos and will post them when I process them. Gotta have dinner first -- I'm hungry. A funny observation -- since this company had their own chip fab line, I was expecting a lot of bidders from other chip companies -- the equipment was a few years old but well maintained and still very usable. About fifty people showed up and they were all geeks -- I could have gone over to the MSFT campus and rounded up 50 people at random and you would not be able to tell the two groups apart. I fit right in... Posted by DaveH at October 29, 2008 6:13 PM
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