Patent ID: 6841033

Claim:
A method of moving workpieces to and from a plasma treatment chamber comprising: providing infeed and outfeed tables adjacent a plasma treatment chamber; receiving automatically first workpieces serially, one at a time, onto the infeed table by receiving one of the first workpieces onto the infeed table, moving the one of the first workpieces in a first direction toward a discharge end of the infeed table, moving the infeed table to a position aligning a portion of the infeed table with a workpiece receiving location, receiving another of the first workpieces onto the infeed table, and moving the other of the first workpieces in the first direction; storing the first workpieces is parallel on the infeed table; transferring automatically and in parallel the first workpieces from the infeed table into the plasma treatment chamber; receiving automatically second workpieces serially, one at time, onto the infeed table during plasma treating of the first workpieces; storing the second workpieces in parallel on the infeed table; and after plasma treating the first workpieces, transferring simultaneously and in parallel the first workpieces from the plasma treatment chamber onto the outfeed table, and the second workpieces from the infeed table into the plasma treatment chamber.