Industrial Inkjet
Industrial Ink Jet Printing
Inkjet technology has grown significantly in popularity with researchers and product developers of thin film electronic devices and structures such as Light Emitting Polymers LEP, etchants and UV curing resins. The processes primary feature is the accurate micron scale deposition of precious materials and scalability to large area manufacturing. The past ten years has seen inkjet technology as a technique unveil novel applications in display, solar and PCB markets offering unique benefits. Flexibility and economic production are among some of the advantages inkjet tooling has demonstrated. The additive nature of industrial inkjet is an attribute which attracts users in electronics because multiple stages can be eliminated from the incumbent subtractive technologies such as photolithography.
Recent developments in print head manufacture have enabled the realisation of active and passive electronic structures to offer functionality on printed surfaces. The latest print heads entering the market have greatly improved chemical resistance, smaller drop sizes, expansive operating windows for viscosity & surface tension and reliability.
Although, held in high regard and featured in much academic press anyone who has tried to turn it to manufacturing will know that it is not straight forward. M-Solv has 10 years experience of demystifying the process of functional printing to help our customers achieve their goals using inkjet in production. Every drop is relied upon weather its volume or particle deposition to a location on a surface however, even with the high reliability of the jetting process missing drops or jets cannot be avoided in the high frequency operation. In these instances M-Solv integrate optical recognition and controls to compliment our redundancy which can repair any process failures.
Our business is to integrate production machines to your requirements which is head specific according to the application and extends towards investigating the ink, substrate, vision systems and enclosure to control the process technology. With access to several analytical techniques at the Oxford University Materials laboratory we can assess the complex process during integration. All of our systems are built on Granite bases to ensure stability such that our stages achieve the accuracies specified by the application requirements.
Industrial inkjet in production is rarely a standard process and the machine architecture can often be unique particularly in emerging markets such as thin film flexible electronics, solar and handheld devices. M-Solv manage phased development programs to ensure our customers are part of the integration process.
