Use digital link-jet printing technology to develop and produce PCB, which can positively simplify the production process and shorten the production cycle; which greatly reduce the expensive production equipments and save the cost. It greatly reaches the goal of “energy conservation and emissions reduction”, especially for reducing the capacity of waste-water and improving the environmental pollution, move to “green production”. Therefore, “digital ink-jet printing technology” will get rapidly promotion and application in the PCB industry, and will become the mainstream in PCB manufacturing!
Following is the overview of the ink-jet printing technology from three aspects:
1. Application of digital ink-jet printing technology in PCB industry
“Digital ink-jet printing technology” has mainly four aspects of the application in PCB industry:
(1) Using digital ink-jet printing technology to generate the pattern of corrosion or plating resistance. Using this technology can reduce more than 60% production process of traditional “pattern transfer” process,and can save about 60% of the ink and dry film,and can decrease more than 60% of organic wastewater treatment and discharge.
(2) Applying “digital ink-jet printing technology” to form solder mask and legends. Adopting this technique can reduce more than 60% of the production process of traditional solder mask and characters, and can save more than 50% of solder mask ink,and can reduce more than 60% of organic wastewater treatment and discharge,and can improve the product percent of pass and shorten the production cycle, to reduce the cost of solder mask.
(3) Adopting “digital ink-jet printing technology” produce PCB products directly.The flow is: jet printing conductive graphics on the base material——low temperature sintering——jet printing medium layer——jet printing plating through holes——low temperature sintering——jet printing conductive graphics, repeating the processes to form the required “laminated board”.
Of course, the application of “digital ink-jet printing technology”, needs to follow the development rule of all things,from small to large, from weak to strong, from local to overall, from low level to high level.Therefore, it has to be from the first application in “corrosion or plating resistance” and solder mask and legends,and then to the full jet printing technology based pcb products .
2. key equipment and materials
(1) key equipment – “digital-control” inkjet printer. Including: i). the print head, can spray 5 to 50PL of link drops. ii) productivity, can satisfy the PCB mass production requirements. For example, the working time of 20 x24 square inch working in process board should be between 20 to 60 seconds.
(2) the key materials: printing ink.
The ink usd for ink-jet printing is different from the conventional ink ,especially the viscosity and thixotropy.For the conductive ink used in the PCB production which fully adopt “digital ink-jet printing technology”,must be the ink of “nanoscale metal particles (such as silver, gold, copper, etc.)” , to ensure the sintering under the condition of low temperature , and achieve the conductivity of the metal conductor.
3. Current situation
At present, Japan and the United States have market-oriented professional digital ink-jet printing and special printing ink.Such as MJ6151 series products of Japan CicroCraft k.k ,and Greenjet series(digital solder mask printing system) products of American Printar Inc. These products can be applied in the large-scale production of 50-150 um wire and all kinds of graphics. “Super” digital inkjet printer and “nano silver ink” and “nano gold ink” have emerged, that is to say, the ink drop of 3-5 PL can be jet-printed ,and wire of 3-30um can be producted.So manufacturing full printed electronic products is getting there!
Must be fully aware that full printed electronic using ink-jet printing technology is great innovation which simplifies the PCB production processes, and reduce the cost and greatly improve the environment pollution and foward the green manufacturing, and is an revolutionary progress of PCB industry
iFastPCB will keep continuous attention on this technology, and will apply it at right time in the future t.