Meyer Burger on Inkjet Technology and Digital Printing Benefits

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes

Veri: At the end of the day, if you can make a delivery time of one day or less for your customers’ products versus two or three days from the competition, that’s an advantage. Additive inkjet deposition enables the manufacturer to eliminate processes, which then shortens the total manufacturing process time and cuts costs; these reductions can be an advantage and exploited.

Matties: I understand, but are they going to say, “Change the solder mask for those two days.” I know I’m driving hard at this point.

Veri: If you look at those types of organizations, they are low-volume, high-mix, so they have hundreds and hundreds of orders per month. Thus, you save a lot of time, and that’s where there’s a little more value to be offered to the market.

Matties: I can see where a quick return may be valuable for rapid prototyping, perhaps. What do you gain regarding total cycle time reduction?

Veri: You’re gaining a shift, minimally.

Matties: That’s substantial. And is the curing of the inks that go through here the same process?

Veri: It’s standard. For a solder mask ink, it’s similar to today’s solder mask materials that are applied.

Matties: What I’m driving at is if I’m a fabricator trying to make an argument or a case to my customers, I need to find that bit of ammunition that will get the OEM to pay attention. If they have this information and we help them understand it, it’s going to help you sell more equipment and help them have a better process. With product performance, a mask is a mask, and delivery is delivery. What are some other benefits?

Veri: It still goes back to the economics—the internal process flow in the board shop, the time savings, and whatever value they can pass on to their customer and what that realizes for them.

Matties: What it comes down to is the value that they’re willing to pass on.

Veri: Correct.

Matties: I agree cycle time can be a huge value that they can bring in, and I would think precision is another area that you would have a benefit because you’re using less material overall.

Veri: That’s a good point. In terms of circuit board production, the ability to vary the amount of ink that you apply regionally on the board helps the board designer produce a board more economically, and it helps the producer of the board save in terms of cost. What that means is you print thicker and thinner layers regionally on the board as needed. Also, if you have different dimensions of your copper, it helps us to optimize with a quarter-ounce, half-ounce, or one-ounce copper trace. In that sense, you can create the digital program and application method to build up coverage around the trace. In the same pass, you’re printing around the trace, but you’re also printing other areas along the board with a thinner layer, perhaps. And that creates the aesthetic issue I mentioned as well earlier because the board is going to look different; it’s going to have areas on the board that have thicker and thinner layers of ink applied.

Matties: But functionally, it’s a superior board.

Veri: Yes, it’s as good or better because you can optimize the thickness of the ink around the actual copper trace.

Matties: Normally, you would have to take whatever the maximum requirement is in thickness and apply that across the board.

Veri: With the existing process of record, that’s true. Additive inkjet deposition processes provide you a lot more flexibility in that respect. From a producer standpoint, there’s a lot of value in that. We have to communicate that ability to print differently versus the current process of record, and in doing so, we have to physically and technically demonstrate it. It has to pass certain IPC or other industry standard testing processes.

Matties: That’s really helpful because what you’re saying is that the value is in what the fabricator is willing to pass through, but there’s certain product performance in the process that will give the end user some real value whether it’s cost, time, etc..

Veri: Absolutely.

Matties: It comes down to what the fabricator is willing to do, and to have this process in their factory is valuable. They need to make that decision on how much they’re willing to share in that advantage to their OEMs to adopt this.

Veri: They face price and time pressure from competition around the globe every year.

Matties: And the fact that the industry is aiming to have more digital factories means this meets a lot of the requirements that a forward-thinking fabricator would embrace.

Veri: For example, we have installations where we know our customer tells us they can queue up the number of panels they’re going to run in a shift into the automation system. They can run the system second shift or overnight—whatever their shift configuration is—and come back in the morning, and the printed boards are queued up. Our customers don’t have to have an operator standing right by the tool; they just queue up recipes, images, and the substrate. Then, they’re fed in, we read the barcode, we know what products are being fed into the machine, we know what recipe goes with that barcode, and we apply the material; it can all be done digitally.

Matties: Are you doing any inline inspection on the process as well as the boards being produced?

Veri: We’re not right now, but that’s something that will come in the future as part of the Industry 4.0 movement.

Matties: You must have serialization and traceability.

Veri: We can do serialization and print traceability features in the same pass as we point the solder mask. Now, we have done that for other industries, and I imagine that’s going to flow into this space soon.

Matties: It’s not a technology that’s insurmountable; it’s just something that’s not adopted yet.

Veri: Correct.

Matties: I certainly appreciate you answering my questions and letting me pound you on this point, Don; it was a great conversation.

Veri: I appreciate your time.

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