in contact with the polishing surface after polishing is complete one or more conditioners 218 may be employed to condition the polishing surfaces during a polishing process a wafer may be held in place by a carrier 400 illustrated in fig4 the carrier 400 comprises a retaining ring 406 and a receiving plate 402 including one or more apertures 404 the apertures 404 are designed to assist retention of a wafer by the carrier 400 by for example allowing a vacuum pressure to be applied to the backside of the wafer or by creating enough surface tension to retain the wafer the retaining ring 406 limits the movement of the wafer during the polishing process fig5 illustrates another polishing system 500 in accordance with the present invention it is suitably configured to receive a wafer from a cassette 502 and return the wafer to the same or to a predetermined different location within the cassette in a clean common dry state the system 500 includes polishing stations 504 and 506 a buff station 508 a head loading station 510 a transfer station 512 a wet robot 514 a dry robot 516 a rotatable index table 518 and a clean station 520 the dry robot 516 unloads a wafer from the cassette 502 and places the wafer on the transfer station 512 the wafer then travels to the polishing stations 504 508 for polishing and returns to the station 510 for unloading by the wet robot 514 and the transfer station.