Chad Industries Inc., an Anaheim, Calif., maker of automation equipment for the semiconductor and circuit board industries, announced it has formed a partnership with AJI of Yokohama, Japan, to be the US integrator of its microassembly platform, which has been in development for eight years in Japan and has been installed at several companies there. Scott Klimczak, president of Chad Industries, said the system has been used successfully in fiber optic assembly, disk drive head core assembly, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and semiconductor applications. Chad makes equipment to automate assembly of odd-form components in printed circuit boards and develops wafer handling equipment for the semiconductor industry, liquid handling products for the life sciences industry, and other automated handling, assembly and test equipment. AJI's line of micromachines includes robotic manipulators/positioners with integrated machine vision and force sensing as well as various joining or bonding technologies. Chad will exhibit at Booth 8415 at Semicon West 2006, to be held July 11-13 in San Francisco.