2024 Program

Electroformed nozzle plates have long been a common sight within inkjet printheads. Veco Precision has over 40 years’ experience in this field and now introduces new possibilities using advanced lithography electroforming.
Veco is a world-leading manufacturer of micro-precision parts. It serves the world’s most innovative, hi-tech companies from industries that demand high quality and precision. To meet customers’ specifications and demands, Veco has developed high standards of performance in Electroforming. This technology allows a powerful combination of precision and economical production; for high volumes and prototypes, standard and custom-made products.

Inkjet printheads play a pivotal role in modern printing technology, demanding high precision and durability. This paper presents a groundbreaking approach to fabricating essential components of inkjet printheads by using glass as the core material, namely nozzle heads, ink manifolds, and nozzle guards. With Laser Induced Deep Etching (LIDE) technology, we achieve excellent outcomes in terms of positional and dimensional accuracy, surface quality, and functionality due to the design freedom LIDE provides.
Glass has unique properties and LIDE allows leveraging them to create high-precision glass nozzle plates with a wide range of nozzle dimensions, pitch and arrangements, in different cross-section geometries such as straight through-holes, tapered, V-shaped, and funnel-shaped. The resulting glass components exhibit exceptional chemical resistance, thermal stability, abrasion resistance, high rigidity providing mechanical stability, while also exhibiting very high transparency which could be of high interest when using UV-curable inks, for example. We demonstrate the versatility of LIDE by fabricating surface structures and through-glass structures in the same substrate and process step, allowing the fabrication of ink manifolds with complete design freedom. Our technology doesn’t generate any defects and maintains all the material characteristics of glass, particularly mechanical ones, which is of particular importance for glass-based nozzle guards.

The present work aims to introduce the novel FEMTOPRINT® microfabrication technology, based on ultrafast laser and chemical wet etching processing, to create three-dimensional, high-precision patterns into transparent, glass materials for a wide range of applications and microdevices. Thanks to the ability to generate 3D geometries with micrometric precision, to treat surfaces to achieve optical transparency on virtually any surface topography, and to laser weld hermetically microdevices without the need of glue or adhesive, new horizons for integrated microfluidics are yet to be explored.
More specifically in the inkjet industry, novel micronozzle arrays with a high degree of shape freedom and features dimensional repeatability over centimeter long substrates, within an exceptionally stable material as it is glass, can be now conceived at an industrial scale. Beyond that, the technology enables the integration of certain functional coatings to modify surface properties or the application of 3D electrodes, contributing to a new microfabrication approach suitable for a wide spectrum of microfluidic devices.

In inkjet printing, spreading and ab-sorption processes determine the final area of a printed dot, which is decisive for print quality in terms of coverage and resolution. In this work, the printed dot area of overall 140 paper-liquid pairings representative for the operational window of an inkjet printer is evaluated. The results are explained by a model including spreading, absorption, and evaporation. The surface tension and viscosity of the liquids, as well as the pore size and polarity of the substrates were varied systematically to represent the range of uncoated paper-liquid pairings applicable for inkjet printing. We propose a novel modeling approach for liquid wetting and liquid penetration from surface energies of substrate and liquid. For this purpose, the contact angle and liquid penetration is modeled by polar and dispersive surface energies, utilizing the theories of Owens-Wendt-Rabel-Kaelble (OWRK), Wu, or van Oss, God, Chaudhury (vOGC).

Ulrich Hirn holds a Master’s degree in mechanical engineering, followed by a PhD in paper science from Graz University of Technology. After a brief stint at SCA R&D Centre in Sundsvall, Hirn returned to Graz, where he is a full professor for paper and fiber technology. His research interest is centered on fiber and paper mechanics, adhesion, paper-liquid interaction, and printing. He has been working with paper related issues of high-speed inkjet printing for the last 10 years.

The widely used plastic moulding technology can be implemented very well in a production cell. Integrating additional production steps, such as direct printing, brings considerable time and cost benefits.
However, this requires additional development work and adaptation of the process and chemistry. Only then can "inline production cells" be realised from such production cells.
At Mankiewicz, we started working with customers and machine manufacturers at a very early stage to develop solutions together. I will talk about this in this presentation.

Rub resistance is a parameter of major importance for the quality of inkjet printouts used in marking and coding. Yet, it becomes challenging to evaluate when the substrate has been bent prior to testing, like in the case of electrical cables, wires, or optical fibers.
This communication presents a solution embodied by a prototype machine specifically designed and built for this purpose and a testing method associated with it. In particular, all the parameters of interest, i.e. the bending speed, angle and radius, and the rubbing speed and applied force can be adjusted over a range representative of the real industrial constraints. The processing of the data allows for a precise quantification of the rub resistance of the ink printed on previously bent substrates.