Patent ID: 7648409

Claim:
A double side polishing method for at least automatically rotating a plurality of carriers holding works to be polished, between an upper rotary surface plate and a lower rotary surface plate to simultaneously polish both surfaces of a plurality of works held by the plurality of carriers, comprising the steps of: merging each work with the carrier outside the lower rotary surface plate before supplying the work onto the lower rotary surface plate; and supplying the work merged with the carrier outside the lower rotary surface plate, onto the lower rotary surface plate in a merged state, in which, before merging the work with the carrier outside the lower rotary surface plate, the carrier is conveyed from a carrier housing section that houses the carrier to a carrier aligning section and positioned at a specified location, the work positioned at a location different from the carrier aligning section and is merged with the carrier positioned at the specified location by the carrier aligning section, and the work merged with the carrier by the carrier aligning section is supplied from the carrier aligning section onto the lower rotary surface plate, and such that when the work merged with the carrier is supplied to the lower rotary surface plate, an indexing operation of rotating the lower rotary surface plate through a predetermined angle to supply the work and carrier to their specified position, and the operation of indexing the lower surface plate is performed so as to prevent carriers already placed on the lower rotary surface plate from moving relative to the lower rotary surface plate.