iRaiders of Melrose MA (2713)

Visit to iRobot

Today the students of the Melrose FIRST Robot team visited the iRobot facility. What did you see, who did you meet, what did you learn?

Would you like to work at iRobot?

Visit to Custom One Design

Peter Nuytkens, CEO, led the tour of the Custom One Design facility. It started with an overview of the schematic of an ACIS chip. The schematic gave everyone an overview of the features they would be able to see with a microscope. Next stop was a manual test station. A chip placed on a board was mounted on an X,Y,Theda rotating table. Each student was able to position the chip with verniers under the microscope. This gave them a good feeling for the extremly small dimensions of the chip and the precision that the robots would need to work with them. Next stop was the robot manufacutring room. First piece of equipment was a testing machine (see photos).  The most impressive machine was a Swiss machine that sliced up the large wafer into discrete chips, inspected the chips, picked them and placed them on a small printed circuit board.