Thursday, March 08, 2007
Job #12: Texas Instrument Clean Room
I baked wafers of microchips on glass holders called boats. If there was an empty space on a boat, I would fill it with a dummy, a blank wafer. Packages of dummies had letter and number designations that I never really understood. A4, C3, etc.
There was a shelf full of dummy packages with the designation H1, right inside the entrance to the clean room. I stood in the air lock at the beginning of each 12 hour night shift, air jets blowing potentially destructive dust particles off my bunny suit, and I would stare at the rows of packages labeled "H1 Dummies." Through my goggles it always looked like a dozen little signs taunting, "Hi dummies. Hi dummies. Hi dummies."
