Catastrophic failure at aluminum extrusion line - GIFs

**Ed Weldon** · Dec 24, 2023, 09:59 AM

My experience in the semiconductor equipment industry goes back 25 years to the process called oxide etch. The insulating layer in a chip was silicon dioxide, plain old, but very pure quartz. The only way you could cut the patterns in it was with hydrogen flouride based chemicals. Really nasty stuff. We used nothing but Swagelok fittings in all metal lines to feed the etch chambers. At the time that was the best of the best. I hope the engineer who designed that extrusion line had good liability insurance and will stick with more benign technologies for the rest of his career.
Interesting to watch the progress of the explosion as the liquid oil first burns as it lands on the hot metal and then having vaporized spreads out to a critical and contained volume of fuel/air mix that then explodes to destroy the building. I hope the workers involved sensed what was happening and were able to escape alive.

**NeiljohnUK** · Jan 2, 2024, 09:29 AM

Originally Posted by Ed Weldon

My experience in the semiconductor equipment industry goes back 25 years to the process called oxide etch. The insulating layer in a chip was silicon dioxide, plain old, but very pure quartz. The only way you could cut the patterns in it was with hydrogen flouride based chemicals. Really nasty stuff. We used nothing but Swagelok fittings in all metal lines to feed the etch chambers. At the time that was the best of the best. I hope the engineer who designed that extrusion line had good liability insurance and will stick with more benign technologies for the rest of his career.
Interesting to watch the progress of the explosion as the liquid oil first burns as it lands on the hot metal and then having vaporized spreads out to a critical and contained volume of fuel/air mix that then explodes to destroy the building. I hope the workers involved sensed what was happening and were able to escape alive.

Swagelok still pretty much rules in semi-con, VCR rather than compression in most of the kit I work on, and HF etchant systems are still needed.