ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 5 -- United States Patent no. 12,278,134, issued on April 15, was assigned to Applied Materials Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.).
"Servo-control system" was invented by Paul Wirth (Kalispell, Mont.) and Behzad Taheri (Austin, Texas).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A lift apparatus includes a lift assembly and a servo-control system. The lift assembly includes at least one pneumatic actuator including a movable member to provide a load to transfer a substrate between a support and a transfer plane. The lift assembly further includes at least one proportional pneumatic valve to control fluid flow between the actuator and a pressurized fluid supply or a vent, a plurality of pressur...