Thermalpas field deployment (Taiwan) · Semiconductor & Hi-Tech
UMC: two cable-joint anomalies caught in three years
Power-cable joint and equipment thermal monitoring with annual baselines at an 8-inch fab.
- 60Sensors in an 8" fab
- 2Anomalies caught (3 yrs)
- $50M+Fab-estimated exposure per event
The problem
At a UMC fab, power cables thicker than a human arm run under the floor, carrying current to every tool under sustained high load. From the outside there is nothing to see — but inside, the insulation slowly heat-cycles, lug screws slowly back out, and a phase can be lost before anyone notices. A cable burnout that takes down a fab costs more than $10 million per hour.
What was installed
Thermalpas sensors were bonded at every cable joint and on the equipment side of each cable. An annual temperature baseline was built for each cable — what normal looks like through summer heat and winter cooling — and a drift of more than 10% from that baseline was flagged for inspection without waiting for an alarm threshold.
The outcome
A UMC 8-inch fab deployed 60 sensors. Over three years, the system caught two cable-joint anomalies — one loose lug screw, one slow insulation degradation from a small leak — that the fab conservatively estimates would each have caused a $50M+ shutdown.
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