BY SUZY TRITENBACH – SEC’S DICING TAPE SPECIALIST
Deep Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado is a subcontractor on the Orion multipurpose crew vehicle. Lockheed Martin is the prime contractor for NASA on the Orion Project.
What’s interesting about the Orion project is it will support travel to the International Space Station, the Moon, and Mars. It can also go anywhere that can be reached in 1,000 days. Of course they will probably want to go 500 days or less each way so they can make it back.
The Orion looks a lot like the old Apollo systems but it is tremendously advanced compared to the Apollo and the Shuttle. Deep Space Systems provides engineering services and in the application we are familiar with they provide machined parts. As you can imagine, parts for a space crew vehicle need to be kept in pristine shape, so Deep Space Systems applies “Blue Tape” to protect the parts. Blue Tape is also known as “Dicing Tape” in the Semiconductor Industry.
They have chosen SEC Blue Medium Tack tape because it has properties that are ideal for surface protection. These are the same properties that make it ideal for wafer dicing. The adhesion is strong enough to adhere during shipping and handling of machined parts and light enough to be easily removable. This compares to strong enough adhesion for dicing and light enough adhesion for die picking.
