CN115135004A

CN115135004A - Circuit manufacturing equipment and circuit manufacturing method

Info

Publication number: CN115135004A
Application number: CN202110312465.0A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 林剑; 马昌期
Original assignee: Suzhou Institute of Nano Tech and Nano Bionics of CAS
Current assignee: Suzhou Institute of Nano Tech and Nano Bionics of CAS
Priority date: 2021-03-24
Filing date: 2021-03-24
Publication date: 2022-09-30

Abstract

The invention discloses a circuit manufacturing device and a circuit manufacturing method. The circuit manufacturing apparatus includes: printing a spray head; a position and distance monitoring assembly for performing position alignment and distance confirmation between a nozzle of the print head and a target area on the printing surface; a drive mechanism for driving the print head to perform at least one of the following actions: the device moves along a first direction on a horizontal plane, moves along a second direction which is perpendicular to the first direction on the horizontal plane, moves along a vertical direction, inclines until a required included angle is formed between the axis of the device and the vertical direction, and rotates around the axis of the device; and the control unit is at least connected with the printing spray head, the position and distance monitoring assembly and the driving mechanism. Compared with the prior art, the invention can effectively give consideration to the precision and the production efficiency of the printing circuit by adjusting the angle in stages, greatly reduces the production cost and obviously improves the product quality.

Description

Circuit manufacturing equipment and circuit manufacturing method

Technical Field

The invention relates to a circuit manufacturing method, in particular to a method for manufacturing a circuit by adopting a printing method, and belongs to the technical field of additive manufacturing.

Background

With the development of additive manufacturing technology, it has become possible to manufacture conductive parts such as circuits and antennas directly on various surfaces by printing. Recent materials and process studies for printing various conductive, semiconductive and dielectric layers have achieved remarkable results, but most of the time, they have not been able to replace conventional semiconductor integrated circuits. Therefore, one of the major mainstream methods at present is Hybrid Electronics, i.e., "Hybrid fabrication of electrons". In short, the printed wires are used to connect conventional electronic components, such as capacitors, resistors, inductors, chips, Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), etc. In another aspect, such circuits are more similar to PCB or FPC boards, but the manufacturing process has revolutionized, particularly using printed conductive traces or other conductive features instead of the conductive features that were conventionally etched from a single piece of copper foil.

To more specifically characterize the hybrid manufacturing electronics described above, a printed antenna RFID tag may be taken as a specific example. It is common practice to print the antenna and heat it, then fix the chip in a reserved position and secure the connection between the chip and the antenna. Other complex hybrid fabrication circuits are also produced by similar processes: and printing a circuit, fixing various components at the reserved positions, and completing the connection between the components and the circuit.

Although the method can be matched with the existing circuit production process to the maximum extent, the efficiency of large-scale mass production is improved, and some defects exist. One of the most prominent problems is that the process flow substantially limits the advantages of printing as an additive manufacturing technique in the customization of specific circuits. For example, an important requirement for "hybrid fabrication of electronics" is to directly print conductive materials on relatively complex 3D surfaces to form conductive parts such as wires, electrodes, antennas, etc., or to overprint other materials such as semiconductors, dielectrics, etc. to form electronic components. Whereas in principle, printing does allow for the direct customization of circuits on irregular surfaces. However, if a production process similar to a circuit board is adopted, the method is limited to be manufactured on a film or a plate, and the potential of manufacturing a circuit by a printing method is wasted.

However, in practice, the idea of printing fine conductive patterns directly on a horizontally angled surface to be printed has technical difficulties. Because the initial speed of ink drops of ink jet printing, air jet printing and other equipment reaches about 4-50 m/s and is subjected to a certain time of gravity acceleration process, when the ink drops impact a surface to be printed in a non-vertical direction, considerable lateral moving speed can be generated, so that the precision of a printed graph is influenced, and in high-resolution printing operation, the deviation is a factor which cannot be ignored. In addition, the liquid on the surface to be printed with a large horizontal included angle can also gradually move downwards under the combined action of gravity and an inclined angle, and for the ink drops which cannot be dried instantly, the liquid is also an important factor influencing the printing effect.

For this reason, new manufacturing equipment and processes need to be developed to meet circuit additive manufacturing under special scenarios as an important complement to mainstream approaches. For example, for some small 3D complex surfaces, a printing head is generally fixed, the surface to be printed moves, and the local horizontal state of the printing surface is ensured through 5-6 degrees of freedom of movement of a manipulator, so that the circuit printing of the 3D surface is realized. For such circuits fabricated on complex 3D surfaces, the current processes of pasting, dispensing, local heating, etc. can be properly modified to form a complete set, and finally produce a functional circuit on such surfaces.

The most challenging application scenario today is how to print conductive inks on large-sized 3D complex surfaces. For example, when the material of the whole object to be printed is a high-density material such as metal, and the size exceeds 1 meter, the total mass can easily exceed 100 kg, even exceed 1 ton. For the application scene, the existing solution for adjusting the levelness of the surface to be printed by the manipulator is not applicable any more, and only the solution with larger torque like hydraulic pressure and the like can be used. In this case, it is difficult to achieve a fine level of the level adjustment of the surface to be printed. Even if a high quality level can theoretically be achieved by multiple adjustments, the printing speed of the system is severely compromised, production efficiency is reduced, and production cost is greatly increased.

Even if the nozzle is perpendicular to the surface to be printed through angle adjustment of the nozzle mechanism, serious hidden danger still exists in an application scene with a large horizontal included angle. Specifically, the ink droplets on the surface to be printed move downward spontaneously due to the combined action of gravity and the inclination angle before drying, thereby seriously affecting the printing effect. The instantaneous drying of the printing ink drop is difficult to realize for some printing inks adopting solvents which are difficult to volatilize, and even if the instantaneous drying is reluctant, the film forming quality of functional materials in the printing inks is seriously damaged because the solvent volatilization speed is too high, so that the performance of products is seriously reduced.

Disclosure of Invention

It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a circuit manufacturing apparatus and a circuit manufacturing method, which overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.

In order to achieve the purpose, the technical scheme adopted by the invention comprises the following steps:

an embodiment of the present invention provides a circuit manufacturing apparatus, including:

the printing nozzle is used for printing conductive ink on the printing surface of an object to be printed to form a required circuit;

a position and distance monitoring assembly for performing position alignment and distance confirmation between a nozzle of the print head and a target area on the printing surface;

a drive mechanism for driving the print head to perform at least one of the following actions: the device moves along a first direction on a horizontal plane, moves along a second direction which is perpendicular to the first direction on the horizontal plane, moves along a vertical direction, inclines until a required included angle is formed between the axis of the device and the vertical direction, and rotates around the axis of the device; and

and the control unit is at least connected with the printing spray head, the position and distance monitoring assembly and the driving mechanism.

In some embodiments, the position and distance monitoring component includes a plurality of position and distance sensors distributed around the print head via visual identification features.

In some embodiments, the object to be printed is placed on a support mechanism that can at least drive the object to be printed in rotation and/or in a vertical and/or horizontal direction.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a circuit manufacturing method, which comprises the following steps:

providing a printing nozzle for printing conductive ink on a printing surface of an object to be printed to form a required circuit;

performing position alignment and distance confirmation between a nozzle of the printing spray head and a target area on the printing surface, enabling the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area to be 0.5-10mm, and enabling the linear deviation between the nozzle and the target area in the horizontal direction to be less than or equal to 5 mm;

calculating an included angle formed between the target area and a horizontal plane according to the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area and the straight line deviation value in the horizontal direction;

when the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is smaller than or equal to a critical value, the object to be printed and the printing spray head are kept in a relatively static state, and when the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is larger than the critical value, the object to be printed is driven to move until the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is smaller than the critical value, and the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is calculated again;

according to the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane, the printing nozzle carries out at least one of the following actions: the printing ink jet device moves along a first direction on a horizontal plane, moves along a second direction which is perpendicular to the first direction on the horizontal plane, moves along a vertical direction, inclines until a required included angle is formed between the axis of the device and the vertical direction, and rotates around the axis of the device, so that the jet direction of printing ink of the nozzle is always perpendicular to the target area.

In some embodiments, the circuit manufacturing method includes: the position alignment and distance confirmation between the nozzle and the target area are realized by visual identification feature marks distributed around the printing spray head and a multi-point distance measuring sensor.

In some embodiments, the threshold value is 1 ° to 30 °.

In some embodiments, the circuit manufacturing method includes: and calculating an included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane by adopting a trigonometric function method according to the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area and the straight line deviation value in the horizontal direction.

In some embodiments, the circuit manufacturing method comprises: and placing the object to be printed on a supporting mechanism, and driving the object to be printed to rotate and/or move along the vertical direction and/or the horizontal direction at least by the supporting mechanism.

In some embodiments, the initial velocity of the print ink drops ejected by the nozzle is in the range of 2 to 100 m/s, preferably 4 to 50 m/s.

Compared with the prior art, the technical scheme of the embodiment of the invention has the beneficial effects that at least: through hierarchical adjustment angle, can effectively compromise printing circuit's precision and production efficiency. When the horizontal included angle of the target area on the printing surface of the object to be printed is larger than the critical value, the horizontal included angle can be roughly adjusted by moving the object to be printed. Because the precision requirement is not high, the adjustment can be carried out in place at one time, after the operation, the horizontal included angle of the target area is within a critical range within a relatively long time, and at the moment, the angle between the nozzle of the printing spray head and the target area can be regulated and controlled by quickly and accurately adjusting the degree of freedom of the printing spray head, so that the improvement of the precision and the production efficiency is facilitated, and the quality of printed circuits is guaranteed.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of the operation of a circuit fabrication facility in an exemplary embodiment of the invention.

Detailed Description

In order to more clearly illustrate the embodiments of the present invention or the technical solutions in the prior art, the drawings used in the description of the embodiments or the prior art will be briefly described below, it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments described in the present invention, and for those skilled in the art, other drawings can be obtained according to the drawings without creative efforts.

Further, it should be noted that, in the present specification, the terms "comprises," "comprising," or any other variation thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of elements does not include only those elements but may include other elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus. Without further limitation, an element defined by the phrase "comprising at least one … …" does not exclude the presence of other like elements in a process, method, article, or apparatus that comprises the element.

In one exemplary embodiment of the present invention, there is provided a circuit manufacturing apparatus including:

a drive mechanism for driving the print head to perform at least one of the following actions: the device moves along a first direction on a horizontal plane, moves along a second direction which is perpendicular to the first direction on the horizontal plane, moves along a vertical direction, tilts until a required included angle is formed between the axis of the device and the vertical direction, and rotates around the axis of the device; and

In the present description, the formulation of the aforementioned conductive inks is known and can be selected from any ink known in the art for ink-jet printing conductive tracks, for example reference may be made to u.s.2010/0178420, US 61/531347, etc. Or commercially available, such as from commercial companies such as DuPont (DuPont, 5000 silver conductors), Microcircuit Materials (Microcircuit Materials), 14t.w.alexander Dr., Research Triangle Park (MC 27709), etc.

In this specification, the aforementioned position and distance monitoring assembly includes a plurality of position and distance measuring sensors (not shown in fig. 1) and a plurality of visual identification signatures distributed around the print head. These ranging sensors and the like are also readily available from the market.

Accordingly, in this specification, the aforementioned position and distance monitoring assembly may further include a visual detection device, such as an optical image recording device, such as a camera, a video camera, a CCD, etc., which can capture and recognize the aforementioned visual recognition feature.

In the present specification, the driving mechanism may be a multi-degree-of-freedom driving mechanism, for example, a multi-degree-of-freedom robot arm or the like, which can drive the print head to move in a plurality of directions within a set three-dimensional coordinate system. Some or all of the components of the driving mechanisms can be self-contained or additionally arranged in the printing spray head. For example, referring to FIG. 1, in an OXYZ coordinate system, the print head includes two new degrees of freedom, horizontal rotation and tilt angle adjustment, in addition to the conventional degrees of freedom, such as horizontal (x and y axes) adjustment, height (z axis) adjustment.

In this specification, the aforementioned object to be printed may be placed on the support mechanism. For example, the support mechanism may be located above the object to be printed. The supporting mechanism can at least drive the object to be printed to rotate and/or move along the vertical direction and/or the horizontal direction. Wherein the rotation comprises: the object to be printed is rotated around a point or an axis. The axis may be the axis of the object to be printed itself. In a preferable scheme, the supporting mechanism can drive the object to be printed to rotate in the vertical direction, and the rotation axis (axial direction) of the object to be printed is in the horizontal direction.

In this specification, the control unit may be a personal computer, a PLC, an MCU, or the like, in which a set control program or the like is previously recorded. The control unit can receive external instructions, signals measured by the position and distance monitoring component and the like, and regulate and control the working states of the printing nozzle, the position and distance monitoring component, the driving mechanism, the supporting mechanism and the like, such as the initial speed and the type of ink sprayed by the printing nozzle, the actuating states of the driving mechanism and the supporting mechanism and the like.

Correspondingly, the present embodiment also provides a circuit manufacturing method based on the foregoing circuit manufacturing apparatus, which may include the following steps:

the method comprises the steps that position alignment and distance confirmation between a nozzle of a printing spray head and a target area on a printing surface are achieved through visual identification feature marks distributed around the printing spray head and a multipoint distance measuring sensor, the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area is 0.5-10mm, the specific numerical value can be determined by process details, and in the process of vertical descending height, the linear deviation between the nozzle and the target area in the horizontal direction is confirmed to be less than or equal to 5mm through a visual identification feature mark method;

calculating an included angle formed between the target area and a horizontal plane by a trigonometric function method and other methods according to the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area and the straight line deviation value in the horizontal direction;

when the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is smaller than or equal to a critical value (for example, 1-30 degrees according to specific process details), keeping the object to be printed and the printing spray head in a relatively static state, and when the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is larger than the critical value, driving the object to be printed to move until the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane is smaller than the critical value, and calculating the included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane again;

according to an included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane, the printing nozzle performs at least one of the following actions: the ink jet head is moved along a first direction (such as an x direction in fig. 1) on a horizontal plane, moved along a second direction (such as a y direction in fig. 1) perpendicular to the first direction on the horizontal plane, moved along a vertical direction (such as a z direction in fig. 1), inclined to form a required included angle between an axis of the ink jet head and the vertical direction, and rotated around the axis of the ink jet head, so that the printing ink jet direction of the nozzle is always perpendicular to the target area. For example, in one case, the angle of the nozzle can be adjusted by adjusting two degrees of freedom, namely, the horizontal rotation and the inclination angle of the printing head, so that the ink ejection direction is perpendicular to the target area direction, and the angle can be finely adjusted at any time according to the angle change during printing.

In the foregoing circuit manufacturing method, the object to be printed may be driven to rotate and/or move in the vertical direction and/or the horizontal direction by the support mechanism. When the horizontal included angle is smaller than the critical value, the supporting mechanism can be kept in a static state without any angle adjustment. When the horizontal included angle is larger than the critical value, the supporting mechanism drives the object to be printed to rotate so that the horizontal included angle is smaller than the critical value, and then the object is static to stand by.

In some embodiments, the initial velocity of the print ink drops ejected by the nozzle is in the range of 2 to 100 m/s, preferably 4 to 50 m/s. At this time, the flight time of the ink droplets is only in the order of milliseconds, since the distance of the nozzle from the target area is very limited. Therefore, the circuit manufacturing method does not need to consider the change of the flight path of the ink drop caused by the gravity action, and does not need to compensate the deviation of the printing position of the ink drop by extra calculation.

In this embodiment, through hierarchical angle of adjustment, can effectively compromise printing circuit's precision and production efficiency. And when the horizontal included angle of the target area on the printing surface is larger than the critical value, the support mechanism performs coarse adjustment on the horizontal included angle. Because the precision requirement is not high, the device can be adjusted in place at one time. After the operation, the horizontal included angle of the target area is within the critical range within a relatively long time, and the degree of freedom of the printing spray head can be quickly and accurately adjusted, so that the accuracy and the production efficiency are improved, the production cost is reduced, and the product quality is improved.

It should be understood that the above-mentioned embodiments are merely illustrative of the technical concepts and features of the present invention, which are intended to enable those skilled in the art to understand the contents of the present invention and implement the present invention, and therefore, the protection scope of the present invention is not limited thereby. All equivalent changes and modifications made according to the spirit of the present invention should be covered in the protection scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. An apparatus for manufacturing a circuit, comprising:

2. The circuit manufacturing system of claim 1, wherein: the position and distance monitoring assembly includes visual identification features and multi-point ranging sensors distributed around the print head.

3. The circuit manufacturing system of claim 1, wherein: the object to be printed is placed on a support mechanism, and the support mechanism can at least drive the object to be printed to rotate and/or move along the vertical direction and/or the horizontal direction.

4. A method of manufacturing a circuit, comprising:

5. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 4, comprising: the position alignment and distance confirmation between the nozzle and the target area are realized by visual identification feature marks distributed around the printing spray head and a multi-point distance measuring sensor.

6. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 4, wherein: the critical value is 1-30 degrees.

7. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 4, comprising: and calculating an included angle formed between the target area and the horizontal plane by adopting a trigonometric function method according to the vertical distance between the nozzle and the target area and the straight line deviation value in the horizontal direction.

8. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 4, comprising: and placing the object to be printed on a supporting mechanism, and driving the object to be printed to rotate and/or move along the vertical direction and/or the horizontal direction at least by the supporting mechanism.

9. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 4, wherein: the initial velocity of the drops of printing ink ejected by the nozzle is between 2 and 100 m/s.

10. The circuit manufacturing method according to claim 9, wherein: the initial velocity of the drops of printing ink ejected by the nozzle is between 4 and 50 m/s.