ClassOne Equipment expands staff to service and support KLA-Tencor legacy tools

February 6, 2012

(Atlanta, GA) ClassOne Equipment expands staff to service and support KLA-Tencor legacy tools to address growing demand.

Refurbished semiconductor equipment supplier ClassOne Equipment has bolstered its staff and added maintenance and service for KLA-Tencor legacy equipment to answer a growing demand from its customer base. ClassOne Equipment now offers service for the AIT, SP1 and SP2 platforms of KLA-Tencor defect inspection tools.

ClassOne announced that they have added industry veterans Lyn Bursey, senior metrology technician, and Ed Dukats, service manager, to their staff to specifically support the KLA AIT, SP1 and SP2 systems worldwide. The new additions bring the current ClassOne Equipment staff to 40 employees.

Outsourcing Trend: Support and Service

Established 150mm and 200mm fabs are increasingly outsourcing support and service for legacy tools to reduce maintenance costs within the fab. For “super” legacy tools, such as the KLA AIT 1 (defect inspection), KLA UV-1050 (thin film measurement) and KLA 5200 (overlay registration), fabs often look to secondary equipment suppliers as the best place to obtain support and service. The cost savings on service and parts can be significant and on certain super legacy tools where the OEMs no longer inventory parts or provide service.

Joanne Itow, Semico Research analyst and major contributor to a report produced by Semico and SEMI about the secondary and services market, confirmed the trend: “Most manufacturing facilities have already maximized equipment productivity and process yields and are looking for more efficiencies by increasing wafer size. So these factories are now looking to the secondary equipment suppliers to help reduce costs by providing refurbishment, servicing and spare parts for 150mm and 200mm capacity.”

“We can keep these legacy tools running longer,” said Byron Exarcos, founder of ClassOne Equipment. “For the ‘super’ legacy tools specifically, those that are 10 to 20 years old, it’s getting more and more difficult for fabs to get maintenance, service and parts from the OEM. I think that’s one of the reasons that third party refurbishers have really flourished over the past several years. We’ve been growing the company to support these equipment sets because our customers are asking for that service. Our goal is to become the leading supplier of legacy tools and service for the KLA-Tencor product mix.”

To inquire about ClassOne Equipment’s service offerings for legacy KLA-Tencor equipment, contact ClassOne at (770) 808-8708 or email sales@classoneequipment.com.