Tailored Vibration Solutions for Microscopes Enhance Accuracy, Stability & Precision

Daniel Litwin: What's going on, y'all? It's Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B, and welcome to another episode of Vibrations, a TMC podcast. It's a pleasure to be back in the hot seat chatting with the TMC crew. Before we get into the conversation today, make sure you're heading to our website techmfg.com. Again, that's techmfg.com. Not only to find, you know, other pieces of thought leadership, more resources, more episodes of Vibrations, but also to learn a little bit more about our solutions and services and how they can align with your operations. Alright, folks. Today, let's just get right to it. We're gonna be chatting about microscope specific vibration solutions. This is a very important market for TMC and one that, you know, has a lot of fine tuning and a lot of specificity around what solutions, you know, obviously are going to be best attuned for different types of microscopes and different operations. So we're gonna be exploring common vibration control methods for various microscope types. These include optical, SEM, TEM, AFM. Right? And we're gonna discuss some of the differences and needs for, for example, semiconductor failure analysis versus conventional lab use, right, and these microscopes in practical situations. We're also gonna be chatting about assessing and mitigating vibration issues. Right? So, hopefully, when you walk away from this podcast, you'll better learn how to identify or have the right framework for identifying if vibrations or other factors are impacting your work. Right? The role that VC curves, for example, play in site selection, and then arm you with the strategies for addressing some of those external interference issues like construction or raised floors, etcetera. And last but not least, we'll also give some time to discuss the difference between custom versus off the shelf solutions in this space. We'll cover ergonomic and practical considerations for vibration platforms, whether suppliers provide integrated solutions, and why addressing vibration issues early is critical for your facility's long term success. Right? Identifying this early, finding the right solution, and knocking that issue off the checklist. So let's get right to it. Again, to have an open discussion here on microscope specific vibration solutions and how to maneuver this complex field are two of our teammates from the TMC team. We're joined today by Mr. Wes Wigglesworth, Senior Applications Manager for TMC, as well as Mike Coy, Sales Manager for the Americas for TMC. Wes and Mike, welcome to Vibrations. How are y'all doing today? Mike Coy: Thanks, Daniel. Great to be here. Wes Wigglesworth: Good to see you again, Daniel. Litwin: Yeah. Real pleasure getting to sit down and chat. Wes, it's been a minute. Mike, I think this is our first conversation, right, on the podcast. So good to have you join in for the first time. Always love opening the field to new voices at TMC. So real quick, just so our audience understands, you know, what is the expertise y'all are bringing to the conversation today? What are your credentials? Right? What lens are you bringing to this specific, strategic discussion? Wes, if you could kick us off, just a little background on yourself. Wigglesworth: Yeah. For sure. Thanks, Daniel. So, my background in education is engineering, much like many of my teammates here, either physics or engineering. But, you know, getting into the vibration isolation world, really in the late nineties here at TMC as an Applications Engineer. And just working on product solutions, with the applications team, but really focusing on customers and their applications and how our solutions really match up with their applications and their tools, to solve really the most challenging of vibration problems to allow, you know, their instruments to work the way they were designed to work in in challenging environments. Litwin: We're excited to pull from that experience, right, that hands on experience to, offer some education for our audience here today. And then, Mike, same question for you. Give us a little background on yourself and how that's coloring the expertise and the perspectives you're gonna give on the, podcast episode today. Coy: Sure. Sure, Daniel. Thanks for having me here today. My background is in material science, but I've spent the last thirty five years in the EM world. So I started out doing research on on low voltage SEM, looking for ways to deal with nonconductive materials. Later on, moved into product management at at a company that actually makes, microscopes. And, eventually, I moved into sales and and helping people globally find solutions in the in the EM world for for these problems that, our science is facing. And one of the interesting stories is just watching how important vibration management has become as the equipment has gotten better and better over the years. So just for a quick example, cryo EM, everybody talks about how critical cryo EM is for handling these new viruses, for dealing with drug discovery. But this is a technique where we're averaging thousands of images together. And, you know, a requirement like that really starts to push the need for extreme levels of vibration control. So, basically, over the last thirty five years, the work that TMC does has become more and more and more critical to the market, and and that's kind of what led me to be here today. Litwin: And all that experience, seeing the evolution of these applications in the field is going to be key to help us understand how to make sense of the variety of microscope solutions out there today and how different external factors and the, you know, potential vibration sources within a lab or manufacturing environment, etcetera, will determine the right strategies for choosing the right solutions. So let's go ahead and just jump right in. Thanks again, Mike and Wes, for your time today. I wanna start here just to kinda paint the picture of how to even, you know, get in the right headspace for choosing the right solution. Are there any general rules that y'all recommend that you've found are kinda tried and true for the industry, for determining what kind of vibration solution is needed for various kinds of microscopes. Right? So for instance, what's most commonly used for optical microscopes or for SEMs or TEMs or AFMs. Right? So give us that general rule, kinda what's the head space, and then we'll get a little more specific. Wigglesworth: Before answering that question, you know, I wanna talk a little bit about the differences of vibration isolation technologies. So pneumatic springs are a very good isolator commonly used for things like laser tables, optical tables, kind of the foundation of any physics lab or even chemistry labs. And these pneumatic springs are excellent at filtering out vibration coming from the floor or from a frame, typically at high frequencies, say ten Hertz and above or twenty Hertz and above. And, they're self leveling typically, not always. And essentially, again, it's a low pass filter. Of that compared to an active vibration control system, which consists of a sensor that's measuring the vibration and sending a signal, electronic signal to an actuator where that actuator can move. Basically, a micro positioner, and and and that actuator will will will move, on the micrometer scale, you know, equal to the vibration that's being measured. So it's much more sophisticated than a pneumatic spring, which is sort of passively reacting to the floor. It's filtering out floor vibration. An active system is actually measuring and canceling that vibration. Along those you know, same lines, you have microscopes that are much more advanced and more sophisticated than others. So, you've mentioned optical microscope. So optical microscope or a light microscope, you know, these are typically tabletop, instruments that can magnify, say, forty x, but they can also magnify up to, say, two thousand x. So these are, you know, workhorses in a in a in a life science lab or materials metrology lab. And, and you you you are based on our experience and and and, you know, knowledge of the instruments is that, a pneumatic isolator is is more than enough for that type of of, microscope. Sometimes even a nice solid workbench is enough, for some of those lower magnification light microscopes. So, you know, that's perfectly suitable for for that type of of device. And by the way, those light microscopes, just, you know, for our audience, those are things like cell culture research, some materials research, looking at electronic devices, but not really doing high magnification. So when you get into high magnification, and by that, I mean, not just a few thousand X, but a hundred thousand X or a million X or million times magnification, things like electron microscope. So scanning electron microscopes, transmission electron microscopes. These are, imaging tools that are resolving down to a nanometer. Advanced resolution of these devices really demands a much more quiet environment, and, at all frequencies down to very, very low frequencies. So an active vibration control system is not just suitable, but required for those type of instruments. And you know, when you think about the nanometer scale, it's about a billionth or is a billionth of a meter. The SEMs that are used in, say, semiconductor manufacturing, they're looking for defects on a on a wafer, say, a twelve inch wafer. They're looking at a defect on a part of the wafer that's going to be become electronic circuit that goes into your phone. Well, to put that into perspective, imagine being, on a satellite looking down on Earth, zooming in on Manhattan. You're looking basically for an ant on the island of Manhattan, and that gives you kind of a rough idea of the scale of looking for a a a nanometer defect or smaller on a twelve inch wafer in semiconductor manufacturing. So that really needs a very, very quiet, base or floor in terms of vibration. That's where active vibration control really has its place. Litwin: An ant in Manhattan, child's play. That's easy. No. But, I mean, that's a great analogy. There's no way you can, you know, zoom in enough to try to even identify that realistically if there's even a small gust of wind moving, the piece of equipment that you're using, right, to try to find that ant in, you know, metropolitan hub. And, you know, it just goes to show that especially when we're talking these mission critical applications using high powered microscopes in lab settings, in, you know, manufacturing settings, whatever it might be, vibration control is a necessity. It's not a nice to have. It is key. So let's get a little deeper. Mike, maybe you could, touch on this for us. But when we're talking about some of the general, you know, currents that might point you in the direction of the right solution if you're using an optical versus an SEM versus a TEM versus an AFM microscope. You know, go ahead and get a little bit more granular for us. Describe some of the typical use cases where you see those, microscopes in action and, how that determines the correct vibration solution for that microscope for that use case. You can feel free to just kinda pick one and jump in, and then we'll we'll go from there. Coy: Sure.Thanks, Daniel. So, you know, quite often, all three microscopes are used in tandem. Right? To to truly understand the the issues that our customers are facing, they really kinda have to look from the macro scale down to the nanoscale. So most facilities that that Wes and I interact with or or that use our equipment really use all of these these instruments. Right? They're gonna start with a an optical microscope to, to get a grand sense of where things are, to try and understand simple things like, surface issues that they're seeing, whether it's interfaces, whether it's just understanding how, the reflectivity of the surface is acting or or to pick areas of interest to go to the next level. So like Wes mentioned, an optical microscope, you're you're limited by the wavelength of the source, which is light in this case. So your your magnifications are fairly limited. A very basic vibration control system usually is enough to get them through to that point. Now when you step up to an SEM, SEMs have come tremendously far in the last thirty years. A million x in an SEM now is quite possible. And and the biggest difference between an SEM and a TEM, and SEM is a surface analysis tool. You're looking at the actual surface, and it's it's what I like to call a real image of a material. You're looking at ups and downs. You're looking at hills and valleys. You're looking at what your eye could see if you really could zoom into that ant down in Manhattan. Right? That's what it would look like. It would look like an ant still. And as these instruments get better and better, our customers keep finding more and more applications to chase after, and and that makes it even more complicated. Right? So suddenly, now we're trying to do a material analysis at an interface and a two nanometer semiconductor structure. So not only do we need to be able to magnify in to see this structure, we also have to keep things stable while we run, say, an an X-ray map to understand the composition of what's happening. So as that acquisition time extends, the stability requirements become greater and greater. So it goes beyond magnification, and and that's where the active systems that Wes talked about really become critical. We really have to have a stability way beyond what the instrument capable of requiring twenty years ago. TEM now is a is a completely different situation. Right? In TEM, your sample preparation has resulted in an electron transparent sample. So you're actually sending your your high voltage beam of electrons through a sample material. And now we're starting to look at things like contrast due to density, whether in life sciences, density is due to structure of cell walls versus open spaces or whether it's due to, for example, tungsten being more dense than aluminum. Right? The density is what's giving us our contrast. So, again, now we're talking about true atomic resolution, subnanometer scale resolution. The absolute ultimate in in vibration performances. And quite often, combinations of of systems are required to even come close to, being stable enough to see what these people are hoping to see. In addition, now we're talking about new areas of things like low dose imaging where, we have new cameras out in the field that are capable of counting individual electrons as they strike a sample. So as you can imagine, in essence, we're working with a much less intense flashlight and still trying to see more. Right? So we have to spend more and more time acquiring images and stability increasingly, is is the limiting factor in what happens. So, the the the absolute state of the ad state of the art TMC systems, active systems are are the only possible chance to to to succeed in situations like that. Litwin: Now how does the strategy for changing the right vibration control tool change when we're talking about automated tools versus manual tools, for example? Does that change any considerations, in a in a in a really tangible way? I mean, I'm sure there are, you know, nuances to every situation. But is that a key, you know, deciding factor, in choosing the right solution? Wigglesworth: Yeah. You know, a little bit, Daniel. It's an interesting question. So, the automated tools are are often used actually in semiconductor environments where, you know, they're being used in clean rooms and, you know, the loading of the of the instrument is automated by, by, overhead transfer systems and robots. And so there's this more automated, motion and loading of of of wafers that can affect the whole stability of the of the interface between the wafer and the measuring device. So in that case, it's not just vibration isolation, but stability and stiffness of the vibration isolation platform. So these instruments are being installed on on on platforms in in the clean room and in a raised floor, and, they need to be able to process quickly. They need to have high throughput, high high yield as well. And any any, motion in the platform that is unexpected, during that wafer transfer can really impact the performance of that tool and and the throughput. So, in that case, we really need a, a stiff and, stable platform. And I mentioned pneumatic isolators earlier. A pneumatic isolator in that type of, for that type of tool, just, you know, isn't used anymore because of the the sophistication of those tools and and the automation, and the high throughput, you can imagine that's demanded in, a modern semiconductor fab or factory. So, yeah, I guess that's a good case of of, you know, thinking about the automated tools versus, say, a conventional, microscope or a microscope in a conventional lab where, you know, you're loading the samples manually, comes into play. Even in a conventional lab where it's not such an automated process, the stiffness of the platform is still very important, largely because of the SEMs and TEMs are designed with pneumatic isolators built into them. So, you know, in that case, we don't want to you know, we're very careful and we need to understand, the type of instrument and how it's made so that we know not to, support such a microscope with another pneumatic, platform or pneumatic isolator. So in that case, again, active vibration control that's inherently stiff, we call it a hard mount active system, is utilized in that case. So not only for automated tools, but also for some of the advanced, SEM and certainly TEMs. Litwin: Now, obviously, there is a relationship here between the microscope, the use case, and the vibration control, solution. Right? And those are all usually, you know, typically determined by different entities. You know what I mean? All that to say, the environment is not producing the same microscope nor is the vibration control system produced by the same company, for example. So I'm curious if y'all ever run into, for example, microscope manufacturers typically having some kind of specification for floor vibration? Right? Do you ever run into that where you'll actually have the manufacturers themselves sort of give direction on, here is your microscope. We typically recommend this kind of vibration solution or, you know, meeting this kind of criteria or specification, or is it much more custom and sort of, you know, nonstandard? What what do you all see? Coy: Sure. That's that's a great question, Daniel. Pretty much with an electron microscope, all of the manufacturers are gonna go in and do what we call a site survey before an instrument is purchased. They all understand very, very well that the performance of of these modern microscopes, really needs an ultra stable and ultra clean environment. So, before they ever even think about installing an instrument, a site survey will be done. All of the microscope manufacturers are are capable of doing that on their own. Sometimes they come to us and ask us to do it. We have a a slightly higher level of expertise. And they have very well developed specifications for what an environment has to be like to know that their microscope will be successful. So they they absolutely have limits of vibration of magnetic fields of acoustic noise. And, you know, at that point, we we partner pretty well with with all of the OEMs, with all the manufacturers, and they can generally give a rough idea or or even beyond that pretty good idea of what type of system they think will be needed in most cases. And if they're not sure, they may come to us and say, hey. Can can you send in TMC, can you send in your experts? And and we'd like to hear your opinion on on what you think we need to do to meet this this requirement. As these microscopes get better and better in performance, as more applications develop, unfortunately, what we're seeing is is more microscopes being put into less ideal situations. People try to put a high res TEM on a second floor in a building, for example, which obviously is not ideal. But fortunately, quite often, we can deal with it with with the right vibration solution. So it it really does come down to a partnership. The microscope people understand vibration pretty well. Obviously, when when they feel like they're over their heads, they certainly come to us and and we can come in and and talk directly to the customer. But it's a partnership and it's it's truly about understanding the requirements of that of that instrument and and being able to quantify, you know, the dynamics of the environment that we're gonna try to install it in. Wigglesworth: Yeah. And and I just, wanna add to that, Daniel. Mike brought up some really good points about the manufacturers. They all have their own spec, and and you asked about custom specs. Are there standard specs? And I think at the beginning of the discussion, you mentioned, VC curves. So, VC curves, are vibration criteria standard. VC stands for vibration criteria. And it's a standard that was, actually developed in the eighties. Colin Gordon and Eric Unger, developed these the the standard because prior to that, there was really no no standard. So it's it's it was really good to kinda define that standard without going into too much of the detail, but, basically, it it it it, set a, vibration level in terms of velocity, that was appropriate, say, for a forty x, optical microscope compared to, say, maybe, an SEM that needs to get up to a hundred thousand x magnification. And many of the manufacturers of of microscopes use that as their spec, but not all. You know? So so many have, you know, done, maybe deeper analysis or characteristic, of of their of their frame. But, I just wanted to kind of address that that we are often, you know, looking at, vibration data from a facility, from an environment, and comparing that to a custom spec, or, you know, the VC curves. And even when manufacturers have their own custom spec, we'll still use the VC standard as the common language because there's architects involved, there's lab designers, there's facility managers. And, most of the people who have experience dealing with imaging suites in like science buildings or in semiconductor facilities, a lot of them are familiar with the VC curve. So it's nice to have that standard. But, TMC has a lot of experience in not only measuring floor vibration, but, you know, analyzing that data and comparing it to the these custom specs from you know, there's many, many different manufacturers. So there's always something, different coming our way in terms of in terms of these, you know, the the specification and how to, how to address that. Litwin: And let's get a little bit more technical talking about some of those considerations too. You know, when selecting a microscope, obviously, it's essential to account for the environment's vibration levels. Right? What is gonna be causing vibration in this environment? Is it other machinery? Is it construction nearby? Are you in a windy area? Are you, you know, on a higher floor where there might be some building movement? Right? And so this, obviously, will determine some of the instrument's vibration requirements, and we can measure some of this through vibration criteria, VC curves. Can you explain the importance of vibration criteria curves, VC curves in this process, and how you would even approach for someone out there who's, you know, you know, investing in new solutions or they're retooling their existing, production or research ecosystem. Right, how would you even begin to approach determining whether a site meets the necessary conditions for microscope installation in the first place? So, again, explain the importance of VC curves for us and then how you approach determining, if a site is correct for an installation. Wigglesworth: Yeah. Sure. So, you know, again, the nice thing about the VC criteria curves is that, they're they're labeled alphabetically, which is nice. But, like, say, VCA compared to, say, VCG, there's a big difference in the level of vibration that's acceptable, to have to be to meet a VCG environment compared to, say, a VCA or VCB, CD, and so on. So, you know, the the as the letters, go up in the alphabet, the the that it equates to a vibe much quieter environment in terms of vibration. So, you know, Mike mentioned earlier that the manufacturers survey the environments. They wanna make sure the environment is good. And that's really the key, you know, is going in to measure the, floor vibration of the facility where these microscopes will be installed. And, you know, using the right kind of equipment to do that, vibration comes in many forms. I mean, there's periodic or coherent vibration, that might be coming from a fan or an HVAC system. And then there's, you know, what's very common everywhere is just random, incoherent noise everywhere, every floor. So, you know, understanding how to measure and, see the different types of vibration in the data is really important. And what's also important is, you know, measuring down to very low frequencies because the microscopes, I think we mentioned earlier, are very, very sensitive in particular to low frequency, low amplitude building vibration. And that can be difficult to measure if, if you don't understand what you're measuring and why you're measuring it. So understanding kind of, you know, what the requirements are of the microscope, that specification, and, you know, understanding the limitations or capabilities of your measuring equipment. So for example, if you need to measure at very low frequencies and you're and you're measuring over a very wide bandwidth out to say four hundred Hertz, well, you might not see what you need to see at one hertz or two hertz. So there's, you know, tricks to kinda, you know, really capture, really what's happening at one hertz and two hertz, by changing the band changing the, the resolution of of of the spectrum analyzer and things like that, and also using the right kind of sensors. So, you know, we've worked we we do it ourselves. We work with consultants that are out there. The manufacturers themselves have a lot of experience. But that's the key. Again, going to that survey. And not only there's a lot of, people, clients that we work with that are designing a new facility, and, you know, they wanna they they set out to design the facility to a certain level of vibration and then, you know, measure it when it's built. And so the as built, vibration measurements are performed and they get that baseline vibration, inevitably, you know, vibration levels will increase, as the facility becomes more mature, populated with other machines, foot traffic, people walking through the building, construction outside, I think you mentioned earlier traffic. We need to measure that facility at that time when it is mature and populated, because there will be a different level of vibration. So really kind of understanding all that is important. It's not just a snapshot, it's not just one measurement, and it's not, you know, one set of parameters for that measurement fits all. It's it's understanding all these, different important aspects of, you know, the microscope, the facility, you know, and, and the measurement, that all comes into play. Litwin: It might be difficult to to conceive of the right way to gather that data in the first place. A lot of, you know, these companies may not have that personnel on hand naturally. So I imagine a lot of the folks y'all work with are either working with y'all to do some kind of site survey, or maybe they're working with third party vibration consultants to come do a site survey to gather that data, to put a little focus behind we know what we need to capture data wise to inform, you know, the right solution, to make sure we meet specifications. Right? Tell us a little bit about any experience y'all have had doing site surveys yourself or working with third party consultants. You know, do y'all typically encounter any consistent challenges in that process, that make it difficult to gather the right data? And how do you address those typically? Wigglesworth: You know, I don't so much anymore, but I used to do a lot of vibration surveys myself. But TMC, you know, the service team has grown over the years. All of our service team members have the capability to perform surveys, and we often are doing surveys either, as a service to a client, but or also as part of our installations. We follow in installations and do vibration surveys. So we certainly have a lot of experience. And one of the things I always always say is, you know, before doing a measurement, know what to expect and is it repeatable, because those two simple things can really kind of, reveal something that's not right in the data. And, and, you know, the challenges I mentioned earlier, almost are always there. You know, it's how do I measure at very low frequencies and get really what I need in that one Hertz to five Hertz range, which is so critical for the microscope and so prevalent in in in building vibration. I would say that's a big one. And then the other one, understanding that there is random vibration and it's not just periodic vibration and understanding the differences in that and things like power spectral density instead of just power. So, really, you're kinda measuring the, the density of vibration and then expressing the the the vibration in the right way. And that's, again, going back to VC curves. It's one of the nice things about that is that it's a, it's expressed in in RMS root means, square and it's third octave. So it it it averages the data. It's in a common language. So, so that does help quite a bit. But those are the typical challenges that that, we see and how we address those. Litwin: Okay. So we've kinda touched on this, but I just wanna open up dialogue on it again. Vibration from both internal and external sources. Right? Other machinery, other movement around a facility internally or externally. Right? Traffic, public transit, construction, geography, weather. Right? Like, these things can significantly impact the performance of sensitive equipment like microscopes. So I'm curious, if you could describe for me how you would assess or mitigate the impact of those vibrations, right, especially when there's both. How do you actually determine where the source of those vibrations are per se and how they're impacting the actual machinery? Yeah. Again, how would you assess and mitigate the impact of a mix of vibrations, internal and external? Sure. And, in answering that, I'd like to focus on, the vibration isolation solutions that address the two different things, internal and external. So, you know, an SEM, is has vibration in itself. Any frame, any structure is naturally, vibrating at some frequency. And, SEMs and TEMs, therefore, have isolators built into them. So the column, the electron beam column inside the microscope is supported by its own internal, either pneumatic or steel springs or rubber springs. So they're they're very good at isolating at high frequencies. To address external vibration, and we've already talked about, you know, how to measure that, how to how to analyze that, where it's coming from. It can be coming from everything you mentioned and it and it it is. Well, that external vibration is very often at very low frequencies, and that's why an external platform or external base is needed to support these microscopes in in the environment in which they, need to be installed. As Mike mentioned earlier, maybe a second floor or even a third floor and higher. The internal vibration isolation system of the microscope does its job, but it's not going to cancel the very low frequency building vibration. And that's the external, you know, external vibration coming from machines in the building, traffic outside, foot traffic, that the, that the external base under the microscope, mitigates. Litwin: Now have you ever encountered a situation where, you know, an external factor, let's say, a train or consistent construction, did actually interfere with lab equipment. Right? Do you have an anecdotal story or a practical example you could give? Because kind of hard to uproot public transit or tell construction to go away. So, you know, this the solution is gonna be a little more nuanced and more to do with mitigating vibrations rather than maybe just, like, actually addressing the the root of the issue. So how does your team address some of those challenges? Wigglesworth: Yeah. It actually comes up quite often. You know, one one case I really enjoyed, working with the customer on was they they had a an imaging suite in the city in Portland. These oftentimes, these you know, the universities are in cities to where, you know, all the activity is, it's where they want to be. And, we had a customer who and Mike mentioned, I think, sample prep earlier, but so he had a a an FIB tool focused ion beam tool that was being used to prepare a sample. And every time the street car went by, it ruined it the it basically kinda flew off the sample and ruined the sample prep. He had to stop what he was doing. So he had the he had the train schedule on his wall, and he would have to look at the schedule and say, okay. It's one zero five. I've got till one thirty. Then the next train comes by. I gotta do my sample prep. I gotta do it now. I gotta have it done by one thirty. Otherwise I gotta start all over again. So, they called us, we went into the vibration assessment, looked at the environment. Okay. He explained what was going on. And it's basically a very low frequency coming through the ground. Again, that the internal, isolators in the microscope don't take care of and the wrong kind of, platform underneath the microscope won't address either, because it needs to be a very stiff, active hard mount type isolator, that's going to measure that vibration, cancel that low frequency vibration. And once we worked with him and installed the right kind of base under the microscope, he was no longer affected by the train. And the nice thing about that is just his, you know, the throughput with that tool increased, I think, by a factor of four. You know, the usability of the whole lab was increased significantly increased. So it was just, you know, really, beneficial to this particular, not only that one tool, but the whole lab, greatly benefited from, you know, addressing the the problem correctly. Litwin: Okay. Now let's flip this scenario a little bit. I'll step in the shoes of, you know, a research operation or a manufacturing operation for semiconductors, whatever it might be. I already have a microscope. It's already being used. How would I know if my work is already being impacted by vibration that I haven't controlled yet, right, that I have not mitigated or accounted for. Right? Where do you start if you've already started? You already have a site and it's it's operational, but maybe there's vibration you have not investigated into, drawn data on, and come up with a solution for? Coy: Yeah. Great great question. Right? And, you know, there's there's a couple quick answers to it. And the first one is most people that that buy these microscopes, right, these are not small purchases. They've made, very large significant, investments to buy this equipment. And and in the process of purchasing this equipment, most of these customers, you probably took your your prized critical sample, and you went and visited a bunch of manufacturers, and you had them prove to you the type of performance that microscope is capable of giving you. Right? The type of information that you're going to get back from that instrument when you buy it. So now you've bought that instrument. It's it's now in your facility. It's set up, and you sit down and you try to get that type of information. And you find that you're limited, you're limited in resolution or you're limited in magnification or your image quality simply isn't what you got when you looked at the instrument before. And, you know, that's a very quick sign that, wait a minute, something's not right. Right? The the instrument manufacturers and their demo facilities obviously have done the utmost to deal with any environmental issues. So they're showing you, you know, what you what you could call an entitlement. Right? An absolute performance, peak from the instrument. So I think that's the place to start. For smaller issues, what I always like to tell people is look for image artifacts. And and typically, they're repeated image artifacts. Samples can do weird things in a microscope. So if something happens one time, you don't worry too much about it. But suddenly, if you start seeing soft tooth sawtooth edges along a straight feature, or if you start to see waviness in your image during a scan, these are immediate signs that there's some sort of magnetic field or vibration issue that's affecting your your instrument. And, you know, Wes' story is a great way to think about it. A lot of times, these are periodic. You work on the instrument at night. You come into the lab at ten PM when it's quiet. Everything's beautiful. You come in the next day. You try to work at eleven AM when everybody in all the labs around you, above you, behind you is working, and your performance is not not at the same level. So these are all very clear cut indications of something in the environment impacting the performance of the instrument. So those are the places to start, and and that probably covers probably ninety percent of what happens. Right? There's these are very complex instruments, and and obviously, the performance of the environment can be incredibly complex. So repeated image artifacts are really the the key thing to look for and simply not reaching levels of performance that you know the instrument is capable of. That's where I would start. Litwin: Okay. Here's another practical example. You know, likely, our semiconductor audience is gonna find some familiarity in this situation, a raised floor in a facility. Right? You've got your floor. There's an artificial floor on top of it, and you've got cables or you've got, you know, a dirty environment underneath, whatever it might be. You've got a raised floor in your facility. That's gonna introduce some unique vibration challenges. I'm curious how that changes installing a vibration control platform. Any of, you know, any nuances in that strategy or, in the considerations? Yeah. For sure. Yeah. So the the raised floor that that, you mentioned, the semiconductor fabs and certainly, clean rooms. We sometimes see in a life science, facility as well. So the raised floor, great for for people, you know, walking across the floor, electronic supporting electronics, other, you know, robotic devices, things like that. But any imaging equipment, anything that's sensitive at all cannot be installed on top of, of the raised floor. So much like any other environment or case that we talked about, we have to go in and measure the vibration on the subfloor, not on the raised floor, but on the subfloor that that concrete slab that's below the raised floor. So understanding the vibration levels, on that is is what's important. And, yeah, to to answer the root of the question, TMC has been working with with that type of customer for twenty five years, really. And it's a building block solution, that consists of a clean room, clean room compatible platform top supported by the isolators. And we we design that structure underneath the platform to, match so that the overall height matches the height of the raised floor. So it's actually kinda cool. I love it because, you know, you can walk into this fab or or clean room space. You don't even know that the platform's there because it's it's flush with the raised floor height. Our marketing team might not love it because you don't even know our product's in the fab, but it's very low impact ergonomically. And that's what the users of these facilities want, not only address without question the vibration, problem, but also, you know, no no increase in height to that raised floor as they can roll the the tool of the machine right onto that platform. We design and precision engineer and manufacture that platform to fit the footprint of the microscope. And there's many different types of microscopes, so that comes in, to be very important because we don't wanna take up more floor space than necessary. So we take all that into account and, have existing designs because there's many different tool models that we've worked with over the years. But, yeah, it's a it's a somewhat complex problem, but one that we really know how to approach and, have that building block solution to, meet the needs of those types of customers as well. Litwin: Mike from, you know, selling, and curating the right solutions into, you know, typical lab environments. Are there any other considerations you've guided your clients on when, you know, helping them decide on the right vibration isolation solution? You know, if we're talking ergonomics, height, ease of installation, some of the dynamics typical in a lab environment. What else, you know, are is typically influencing that decision? Coy: Yeah. Great great question. Right? I I've been I've been lucky enough to visit microscopy labs all over the world, and, you know, there's a lot of diversity. But, you know, anybody who's been to to a decent number of these labs is gonna realize a lot of them are in basements or subbasements or they're in, you know, very small small rooms that were specifically designed for that instrument. So, you know, ease of installation is critical. You got a microscope that is is a room sized instrument, hundreds of pounds. Now we've got a vibration solution that we want to, apply to that instrument. We have to figure out how do we get that into the building, how do we get that down, you know, two floors into a sub basement, how do we lift up the instrument, how do we get the vibration system under the instrument. So, you know, installation is something that, we put a lot of effort in, both in terms of making it smooth for the customer, but also in terms of designing our equipment. Wes said something a few minutes ago, right, trying to match our footprint to to the instrument. A lot of these these microscopes are in rooms, like I said, designed for them. They also have ancillary equipment. There might be vacuum pumps. There might be, X-ray systems. There might be electronics for cameras. We have to make sure that our space our our solution does not add space to that instrument. So that's a very, very big deal. Ergonomics, like you mentioned, Daniel, what a, you know, what an important thing that people don't think about at first, but the operator in some of these places might run this microscope for eight hours a day. If you suddenly come in here with a solution that that changes the the height of the column, but does not impact impact the the console where the operator sits, you've changed his his or her, you know, movements constantly. So these are things we're very well aware of. We have to understand how does the operator operate on the instrument? How does the operator interact with the instrument? What can we do to make sure our solutions are, effective of space, easy enough to install? How do we make sure that this is a solution that's that's a positive across the board? So it's something that we, you know, we work very, very hard at doing and and making sure that, we fit in a way that, in essence, we're invisible to the customer. Right? The customer at the end of the day wants to see the performance of the microscope. They don't necessarily want to pay attention to our system every day. Right? So we don't want it to impact their daily life. So all of those things you mentioned, footprint, height, ease of installation, ergonomics, every one of them are something that we think about in each product that we that we produce. And, when I visit a new facility for the first time and and and talk to them about their problems, these are important things that we we record and we make sure that we're solving. Right? How do we make sure that the solution is the right solution for what they're trying to do? And and, fortunately, TMC's got a ton of experience with people like Wes that, hey. We've tried something like that before, or, hey. We've run into that situation before. So we're pretty confident that we can come up with a an ideal solution to address those issues. Litwin: Now real quick, let's make a distinction here too. Are there off the shelf solutions for microscopes in this discussion, right, in the specific environments we're talking about? Are there any that you would, you know, or that you typically find yourself working with, or is everything a custom design? You're always finding ones that are fine tuned specifically to that use case, to that lab, to that specific, you know, application. What do we typically see out there? Wigglesworth: Yeah. For sure. We do talk a lot about custom and and the importance of that and being able to adapt to specific, microscopes and footprints. But, about twenty years ago, TMC introduced, SEMbase. So what we did is we looked at, you know, we looked at all the commercial SEMs, and we realized that, they all have a pretty common footprint, not exactly the same, but roughly, like, two and a half feet, maybe three feet wide by three, three and a half feet deep, roughly speaking. We were able to, design a, a base that, fits ninety nine percent at least ninety percent of the commercial SEMs on the market. And, you know, then that's a really nice off the shelf design. We can deliver it quickly. Again, it fits almost all commercial SEMs. It's relatively easy to install without a forklift or, you know, a construction team. And, it's fairly lightweight. I mean, we, you know, we can have a lot of mass. There's a lot of steel. It's there's always these these bases are heavy. You can't, you know, one person can't just walk into a room carrying it under their arm, of course, but, you know, relatively speaking, very easy to install, you know, get it into the elevators and down to the basement level that Mike mentioned earlier, fairly easily. So that's a really nice off the shelf solution. And then in terms of the, like a raised floor application, I mentioned building blocks. The core of that that, of that, solution is something we call STACIS. And those modules are effectively off the shelf. We're custom designing the height of the risers to support it at the right height. The platform is manufactured or engineered and and made to order to fit the microscope. But the, isolators themselves are are off the shelf. And that's, you know, that's nice too because that keeps our our costs down at very effect, efficient in terms of manufacturing. And we still can deliver fairly quickly. But those tend to be, you know, heavy, platforms that need to be, you know, to fit the microscope, much different than, say, SEM Base in a conventional lab. So that's a really good example of something that's standard. Litwin: I'm curious if y'all have any, relationships with the microscope suppliers. Right? Or I guess maybe a better way to frame that up is do any microscope suppliers sell vibration control equipment as part of the whole package, right, when, let's say, I'm a a lab, I buy a microscope from them. Right? Or is it always a separate endeavor, always working directly through, you know, a TMC, for example? Coy: Yeah. It's, we have great relationships with all the microscope manufacturers. Right? We, half of my job is is spending time visiting with them, talking to them, and understanding, you know, what they're doing with their equipment down the road. And, you know, as we mentioned earlier, right, the performance of these microscopes is getting better and better every year. So we have to be plugged in very closely with them to make sure that the solutions we offer, still work or continue to work better with their new their new instruments, that they're coming out with. So we're we're plugged in very, very well with them. As to how they get sold, honestly, a lot of times we leave that up to the customer. A lot of our customers want to do one stop shopping and place one purchase order with the the microscope vendor, and then the microscope vendor can come to us and and buy one of our solutions and and take it. A lot of our customers are the other way. They simply say to the microscope manufacturer, we'll we'll get a site survey. We'll go take care of the the vibration isolation purchase ourselves, and they might come directly to us. Of course, when they come directly to us, we we interface with the microscope company anyways. We we don't like surprises in this industry. So, we keep these relationships close, and and it's really what works best for the customer. It depends on how their money was funded, what type of organization they are. Do they have a relationship with us directly? You know? Wes Wes mentioned some sites earlier. We've we've got multiple systems at at key customers or key government labs. They just call us immediately when they're looking at buying an instrument and, you know, hey. Come out and take a look at where we're thinking about putting this new microscope. What do you think of this location, and how does it look? We're looking at this brand of microscope. Do you guys have a system that works with it? And and they'll just do everything with us directly. So it it works both ways, and and, you know, we're happy to support the customer or or the the OEM, whichever way they they choose to go. Litwin: Alright. A few more, FAQ style questions here before we wrap things up. So, obviously, there's a timeline here in terms of determining you need a microscope, getting it shipped, getting it, installed, and beginning to actually use it. And in that entire timeline, there's a necessity to determine what are, the VC curves. You know? What are the realities in my environment that are gonna determine vibration control and mitigation? So how long before I take delivery of my microscope, let's say, should I consider addressing any vibration issues? Right? When should that process start? Alongside, parallel to or in conjunction when choosing a microscope? Wigglesworth: You know, Mike, you might know from actual user experience, but, I always say, you know, earlier the better. You know, at least consider it at the time you're considering which microscope to purchase, but sometimes even sooner. You know, we have a lot like Mike said, you know, microscopes are getting more and more sophisticated. Some of these large TEMs, you know, clients are designing facilities that are purpose built, so you for that microscope. So you really wanna be considering environmental solutions at even at the design phase or sooner, because you're you you might design your facility differently to accommodate, say a platform to to to support a large TEM. You might wanna build a a raised floor, in that facility that makes it much easier to install a vibration isolation platform. And then, you know, there's different approaches as well in terms of supporting the large TEMs, but really the sooner, the the better, not only for for budget reasons, but for, you know, design reasons related to the facility. And, you know, again, you wanna be measuring the vibration well before, you take delivery of the microscope, so that you can, you know, plan ahead and, you know, explore the options, understand the solutions, and and ensure that you're really installing the the the right solution that's not only going to address the vibration levels that you see in the in the survey data to future proof against, you know, vibration levels that inevitably are going to increase after the facility is populated or there's a construction project next door or even a mile away. We've had client we had a client who, you know, a a a large factory was being built a mile away, and they were being impacted by that project. So you don't wanna have to deal with that later after the microscope is installed. You'd have to actually de install it, move it, then bring in the platform. You not only want a a solution that's going to address what you're seeing now in terms of the vibration signature of the building, but, give yourself plenty of margin, plenty of headroom in that, in that so that you you can, be confident that, you know, you're you're addressing possible increases in the vibration levels, in the future. Coy: I agree a hundred percent with Wes. If if you wait until your instrument's delivered, you're you're in big trouble already. Right? And if it's a new facility being built, you know, we encourage them to to talk to our experts here about small choices that could be made early on that would make a a big difference down the road. And if it's an existing facility, you know, a lot of our current customers reach out to us to to help them make decisions, maybe not on which microscope to buy. We we try to stay out of that, obviously, but where do they wanna install it? You know? I talked to a customer just last week that's gonna buy three different microscopes. Each of those has different vibration requirements based on the type of instrument it is, and and their question is where should we put each one? Like, which room is is the best because we wanna put the highest resolution tool there. This instrument's not quite as as, demanding, so it can go in this room over here that maybe has, it's closer to the elevator or or whatever other feature may be. So, fortunately, the microscope vendors all understand this. They wanna get in early as well or they wanna send us in early as well because the last thing anybody wants is to deliver a multimillion dollar tool and not not get the performance, not get the the solution we were hoping for. So as early as possible, right? And I like it even when people are applying for funding, you know, reach out and tell us you're thinking about buying a microscope and let us let us come in and and stop in and talk to you and look at the facility and look at the options to where you might put it or what possible solutions are there. TMC brings a lot of experience to the table. Right? And most people are lucky if they buy two or three microscopes in their life. Wes deals with four or five, you know, microscope purchases a month, and he's he's got a lot more experience trying to figure this out than than the average customer does. So take advantage of the experience is what we try to tell people, and let us help you now. It makes everything easier down the road. Litwin: Let's talk about down the road here for a second too. Another question I'm sure y'all get is about the long term of mitigating vibration. You, you know, invest in the right piece of equipment for your current VC curves, for your current vibration issues, and then things change. You know? The foundation settles a little differently in the building. New construction pops up. You know? New internal dynamics in the building pop up. So, you know, a lot of people, I'm sure, experience this, that vibration gets worse over time in a facility. Is that true? Why is that? And how should that even be, you know, made sense of strategically for folks listening? Wigglesworth: Yeah. For sure, it's true. Vibration, levels do typically get worse over time. You know, when the facility is built, it the vibration, that's the best it can be really. Once the facility I would say it's mostly due to, traffic in the building, foot traffic mainly, but also, street traffic outside and construction that I mentioned earlier. But as the building is populated with other instruments, HVAC certainly, impacts the vibration of the building and the noise in the building. And, certainly, these things are considered in the design phase, but, but we see it all the time, and there's been been studies done, that are published about, you know, vibration levels in the as built phase. And then, you know, when it's populated and and mature, the vibration levels levels increased. And that's why I mentioned earlier, it's really important to, you know, think about how you're going to mitigate, the current vibration levels, but also think about, you know, this this, phenomenon that the vibration levels do get worse and that you are considering a solution, that, even even if the vibration levels, you know, at the time of install meet spec. Because of this issue, you know, you you you want to really think and consider of installing a vibration isolation platform under the microscope at that time, even if you meet spec. Because, you know, like I said, as the facility is populated and and and the vibration levels get worse, either as time goes on or at different times of the day and the use of this microscope is over long periods of the day, you you wanna account for for all of these scenarios, without deep thinking about it at a later time or dealing with it at a later time because it can be very impactful, to shut down the microscope, and reinstall it after the vibration platform is installed. So, yeah, that's a that's a very important issue that we deal with a lot. Litwin: Alright, y'all. Last question for you. This is just a slight detour to close things out. But what if my facility has a problem with, let's say, magnetic fields or it's really loud, right, not vibration related, but still related to impacting smooth operations. If you have any solutions for those problems, you'll dabble in any other, you know, environmental mitigation? And if so, what those look like, and how do they fit into that ecosystem? Wigglesworth: Yeah. Absolutely. You you mentioned magnetic fields. So that any electron microscope, is not only has a vibration specification that needs to be met, but they also have a magnetic, magnetic field specification. So that is also something that we get involved with. We have a a solution for mitigating magnetic fields. It basically, you know, cancels, pushes the magnetic field away from the electron beam. Very standard design, very simple to install, but that maybe we need to have, you know, a whole another discussion on on that, you know, definitely something that we can address. And, you know, it's the same customers, the same microscopes, not optical microscopes, but the electron beam, the E beams are are sensitive to magnetic fields. And then you mentioned, acoustics can be a bit more challenging to address acoustics. Again, maybe a whole another discussion on that, but when it comes to TMC has thirty years of experience of designing and manufacturing acoustic enclosures. There's so many things to consider when it comes to acoustic enclosures, but there's also other ways to address acoustics. Treatment on the walls, treatment in the ceiling, are definitely common, not our expertise in terms of a room treatment. And oftentimes room rooms are designed to be acoustically quiet. So there's different ways to approach that own set of challenges. We have experience with acoustic enclosures, typically, for specific instruments. But, yeah, that's those are those are both things that we consider. And we when we do surveys, we we measure, not only vibration, but we also measure magnetic fields and acoustics. Litwin: Alright, y'all. I think that does it for our conversation today. Again, we've been covering a whole swath of strategies, relevant practical, examples, and, you know, relationships, whether those are within the industry, or, relationships between different kinds of, you know, vibrations and environmental issues that impact, research or, production, semiconductor fab, for example. Again, speaking to microscope specific vibration solutions, This has been great. Thank you for the two of you, you know, giving your time today to go over all of this, get so in the weeds with me. To wrap things up, if you could point our audience in the right direction, where should they go if they want to actually tap into some of these solutions? Right? Work with TMC or at least get some, consultation on how to move forward. Where can we point them? Wissglesworth: You can reach out to us directly. You can go to our website, w w w dot tech m f g dot com. Feel free to Google Wes Wigglesworth and see what you what you find there. But, call us. You can, email me directly or Mike, anyone of us on the team, our applications team, our service team for surveys. But I would say that's the best way to reach us is through our website. Litwin: Fantastic. Easy enough. Alright, y'all. That does it. Thank you again for your time. Again, folks, we've been chatting with Wes Wigglesworth, Senior Applications Manager for TMC, and Mike Coy, Sales Manager for the Americas for TMC. Wes, Mike, it's been a real pleasure learning from you all today and getting all these insights. Thanks again, and looking forward to some future conversations. Coy: Alright. Thank you, Daniel. Appreciate it. Wigglesworth: Thanks. Have a good one. Litwin: And thank you everyone for tuning in to this episode of Vibrations. If you like what you heard and saw and you wanna join, some future episodes, right, or you wanna tap into our entire ecosystem of previous conversations, you can find more on our website, techmfg.com. You can also subscribe to Vibrations on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. I'm your host, Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B. Thanks for joining us, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Vibrations.