ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,255,087, issued on March 18, was assigned to DISCO Corp. (Tokyo).
"Expanding apparatus" was invented by Tomohito Matsuda (Tokyo), Yuhei Fujii (Tokyo), Naoya Takesue (Tokyo) and Takayuki Masada (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "An expanding apparatus includes a frame fixing part that fixes an annular frame of a workpiece unit, a holding table that holds a workpiece, an expanding unit that expands a sheet, a heating unit that heats the sheet between an outer circumferential side of the workpiece and an inner circumferential edge of the annular frame, and a cover that covers the workpiece held by the holding table. The cover covers the...