Automated warehouse and article removal method

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-8948908-B2
Application number	US-201113819561-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jul 25, 2011
Priority date	Sep 13, 2010
Publication date	Feb 3, 2015
Grant date	Feb 3, 2015

Abstract

A clean stocker includes: a reticle rotatable rack separately storing reticles and a pod; an empty pod rotatable rack; a manual load port supplying to an operator a pod including a reticle; a pod-with-reticle rotatable rack temporarily storing the pod including the reticle; a detecting unit detecting an instruction sent from the operator; a pod opener for, when a first instruction is detected, obtaining (i) a reticle from the reticle rotatable rack and (ii) an empty pod from the empty pod rotatable rack, and placing the obtained reticle into the empty pod; and a pod transporting apparatus (i) putting on the pod-with-reticle rotatable rack the pod including the reticle, and (ii) when a second instruction is detected, transporting the pod including the reticle from the pod-with-reticle rotatable rack to the manual load port.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. An automated warehouse comprising:
a storage rack which separately stores articles and a case for containing at least one of the articles;
a load port which supplies to an operator the at least one article contained in the case;
a temporary storage rack which temporarily stores the at least one article contained in the case until the at least one article is transported to the load port;
a placing apparatus which, when a first instruction from the…

Assignees

• Nomura Misaki
• Murata Machinery Ltd

Inventors

• Nomura Misaki

Classifications

• H10P72/3406

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10P72/3404

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10P72/3402 Primary

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10P72/1906

  Electricity · mapped topic

• B65G1/137 Primary

  Operations & Transport · mapped topic