shaped mounting plate 28 as illustrated with dashed lines in fig2 and 3 the system 20 abuts a process tool 32 which may be a 34 wet bench 34 for liquid immersion processing of silicon wafers a horizontal diffusion furnace or any other processing tool which requires vertically oriented wafers the process tool 32 includes a robot arm not depicted in any of the figs that positions a process carrier also not depicted in fig1 4 onto the wafer mass transfer machine 24 either to receive wafers from or deliver wafers to the system 20 as illustrated in fig1 and 4 the smif pod load interface 22 receives a smif pod 36 onto a loading platform 38 the pod load interface includes a pod present sensor not separately depicted in any of the figs for detecting arrival or removal of a pod the smif pod 36 includes a motorized pod opener mechanism not separately depicted in any of the figs to open the smif pod 36 the pod opener mechanism releases a smif cover 44 from a smif base 46 and then raises the smif cover 44 above a smif pod 39 s wafer carrier 48 carried within the smif pod 36 while concurrently enclosing the smif pod 39 s wafer carrier 48 within the mini environment 26 an optical sensor not separately depicted in any of the figs and distinct from the pod present sensor described above detects the presence of the smif pod 39 s wafer.