Conventional embossing printing technology which can be used to produce metallic glossy images on stereo-shaped objects needs a pressing plate with the image patterns specially arranged. Accordingly, the embossing system is relatively expensive and lacks the adaptability for high-mix low-volume production. Considering these facts, we developed the Digital Quasiembossing Technology (DQT) which consisted of the technology combined with UV-curable inkjet printing and hot foil-stamping. We reported the DQT for the first time at NIP 28 in Quebec City last year. This paper is a continuation of the last report and describes the following facts. (a) We have improved the adhesion of UV-curable ink to a metallic foil, and consequently we can make not only relatively small-sized products but also large-sized ones with pictures and letters printed thereon. (b) The improved DQT system can produce higher gloss than the last system reported at NIP 28.

Localized dispensing of precious functional materials has attracted considerable interest in the academic as well as the industrial society. While the number of publications show numerous fields of applications in printed electronics, photovoltaics, display technologies and thin functional coatings, the transition into the industrial sector is often hindered by challenges resulting from ink-printhead combinations and their implications on reliability and stability of the process, as well as side-effects such as mist accumulation in heavy duty printing equipment.While measuring equipment to quantify various rheological and interfacial parameters foor fluid optimization has been developed with the accompanying mathematical models, the physical jetting experiment as well as high-duty printing trials cannot yet be substituted by these methods. In order to quantify the generation of a droplet alongside with its tailing behavior and mist formation as well as statistics based on cross-talk effects and relaxation-related effects, high-resolution and high-speed imaging are required.This paper examines the optical setup and outlines the required calculations for establishing sharp, high-resolution images using a combination of a high power laser diode with a resonant MEMS micro mirror with a theoretical resolution of 1.8 μm. The limitations of the setup regarding the achievable resolution as well as potential improvements are assessed. Furthermore, the experimental setup, including repetitive generation of nanosecond-pulses necessary for motion-blur-free images, will be discussed. Additionally, results from imaging a droplet formation process using a Xaar 126 printhead are discussed.

In the search for efficient methodologies focused on up scaling production of low cost functional ceramic oxides, the implementation of Chemical Solution Deposition (CSD) in combination with drop on demand (DoD) inkjet printing technology is a challenge in materials science. When simple additive processing is implemented in continuous reel to reel systems with novel low-cost materials, the potential to further decrease the production costs of the whole manufacturing process is immense.Sets of parallel YBa2Cu3O7−x (YBCO) stripes, 250 nm thick and 150 μm wide, with critical current densities (Jc) of about 1.1 MA/cm2 at 77K and self field are obtained.On the other hand, different designs of magnetoresistive La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 (LSMO) devices with electrical resistances in the range of 10 KΩ including the contact pads, are drawn onto LaAlO3 (LAO) and SrTiO3 (STO) single crystals. We particularly investigate different strategies to increase pattern resolution and accuracy. Preliminary morphological and electrical characterizations of the device on cheaper amorphous, polycrystalline and textured substrates are presented.Therefore, this paper gives a summary of functional ceramic oxides patterning by combining CSD and inkjet printing methodologies onto different single crystal, polycrystalline and textured substrates. The present work demonstrates a powerful method of fabricating multifilamentary YBCO patterned coatings for low losses coated conductors (CC's) and LSMO magnetoresistive analog encoders for position sensing.

A general two-dimensional coding means is presented that allows recovery of data with only a cropped portion of the code, and without knowledge of the carrier image. A description of both an encoding and recovery system is provided, along with an illustrative example. Our solution involves repeating a payload with a fixed number of bits assigning one bit to every symbol in the image, whether that symbol is data carrying or non-data carrying, with the goal of guaranteeing recovery of all the bits in the payload. The system uses row-to-row offset itself to communicate the value of the phase of the circular payload. The recovery system is given the number bits in the payload, evaluates each candidate shift and ranks its confidence based on the variance of the payload bits. Symbols determined to be unsuitable for recovery are labeled “abstentions” and not included in the decoding process; special consideration is given to the checkerboard subsampling that can occur in the case when halftone cells are used as the data-carrying symbols. This particular application is examined via tests to quantify the likelihood of unrecoverable bits and bit redundancy as a function of phase and crop window size.

Inkjet printing is becoming widely used in areas beyond current document printing such as digital fabrication and industrial printing. Success in product development for different digital fabrication and industrial printing applications is greatly dependent on the fluids that are printed. Xerox has developed the M-series print head, which is an innovative stainless steel head capable of jetting a wide variety of fluids at both ambient and elevated temperatures. This head has been designed to have long life and high reliability. Also it has one of the highest fluidic outputs, per linear inch, of any print head in the market today. The goal of this paper is to give the reader some understanding of following for the M-series head. First it's mechanical and fluidic design, how the print head is constructed, its high performance operation, and its ability to jet fluids at a variety of temperatures. Second the paper discusses the heads unique ability for jet to jet calibration, key implementation guidelines, and its great reliability and robustness. Third the paper talks about current uses of the head and future variations that can enable more digital fabrication and industrial printing applications. This paper describes the value of the M-series print head and its usefulness in expanding the digital fabrication and industrial printing revolution.

Back contact solar cell concepts feature both metal contact polarities on the rear side of the wafer. PVD (Physical Vapor Deposition) is one option for high quality metal layers. To create a working device the metal contacts must be separated. This work reports on the evaluation of an economic process route using an etching ink that is inkjet-printed onto metal layers. Drop on demand inkjet technology is very well suited for the deposition of such etchants onto the thin wafers as it allows for the well-defined deposition of complex structures needed e.g. for the rear side of back-contact solar cells. It is investigated how the amount of ink and thus reactive species influences the width of the etched structures and if they are electrically isolated. The width of the etched structures has been reduced down to 65 μm on 1000 nm thick Al-layers by adjusting the amount of ink printed on the metal layers. The separation was demonstrated by measuring the electrical resistance between the separated metal areas. The presented process provides a structuring solution for the cost effective contact separation for back contact solar cells. The feasibility has been shown by printing a meander structure which is the typical contact separation layout for a BC-BJ (Back-Bontact Back-Junction) solar cell.

Currently, a mass of digital printing machines emerge in the market, whose brands, norms and types are abundant. Their application in the field of digital printing is increasingly wide. However, after the study on these machines' parameters, the fact that almost no machine can be used in map digital printing is discovered. Therefore, digital printing technique can hardly be used in map digital printing field. This paper analyzes the particularity of map products, pointing out the fact that maps have relatively large breadth and lay rigid requirement on the image-text precision, which should uses high folding strength while low variant paper to print. Current printing machines cannot meet the needs of the above parameters simultaneously, which leads to the blankness in map digital printing field. This paper put forward the needed parameters and chief functions of digital printing machines used in map digital printing, which provides important reference for the printing machine producers and manufacturers to extend the products' application range.

SAMBA™ inkjet printheads offer a high nozzle packing density of 1200 nozzles per inch, flexibility to print with multiple drop sizes, and wide ink latitude making them attractive candidates for a variety of inkjet printing applications. In this paper, we offer insight into how these features can be utilized to enable imaging models that provide high image resolution and print speed as well as increased robustness to missing jets, a key element required in single pass printing. We show that SAMBA printheads can be designed to operate in multiple imaging modes and we use simulation and experimental data to analyze their performance. We evaluate multiple imaging models enabled by SAMBA 1200 printheads and compare them for their image quality capability, image artifacts caused by transient jets, and productivity potential for single pass printing. We show that Samba 1200 imaging models combined with over-addressing and grayscale printing offer superior image quality and improved robustness to streaks without compromising on productivity.

ElectroInk experiences multiple transfers, some electrostatic and others mechanical, on its way from the ink can to printed image in an HP Indigo press. For example, in the binary ink developer (BID) [1], ink is electrostatically transferred from the developer roller to a metal cleaning roller and then removed from the cleaning roller and returned to the ink tank by mechanical action. The disposition of ink charge following transfer is critical to the performance of the press. Of particular interest are the timescale for ink charge decay following electrostatic transfer and the impact of mechanical transfer on ink charge. Both of these subjects will be addressed in this presentation.Retention of ink particle charge in the time interval between field driven transfers is imperative for successful printing. In the LEP process, ink potentially can be discharged while on the photoconductor (PC), between development and transfer to the blanket. In a Series II press operating at a print speed of 1.2 m/s, residence time for ink on the photoconductor is up to 400 ms. Ink charge decay rate on the PC was measured by four electrostatic probes distributed around the circumference of the PC drum at distances of 15, 50, 250, and 500 mm from the active development station. A patch of black ink was transferred from the developer roller to the rotating, uncharged PC by engaging the negatively charged developer roller for 400 ms while simultaneously monitoring the four voltage probes until the ink and PC were fully discharged. Significant voltage decay occurred during the first few seconds, although the bulk of the voltage decayed with a time constant of several hundreds of seconds. Combining these data with additional measurements revealed three independent discharge processes: 1) ElectroInk discharge, 2) PC dark decay, and 3) PC charge depletion [2]. The latter two contributions were isolated from ink discharge by replacing ink with clean Imaging Oil and using the developer roller in the BID as a charge roller to charge the PC. Time constants for ink discharge were greater than 1 s, more than sufficient to ensure that ink charge is not dissipated before reaching the blanket. Charging agent was found to have a strong influence on charge decay rate.Additional insight into ElectroInk behavior in the press was obtained by engaging the PC cleaning station during the discharge experiment. The cleaning station contains a wetted sponge roller and cleaning blade, both in direct contact with the PC, which removed all vestiges of ink solids. However, nearly all ink charge remained behind on the PC. As charged ink is scraped from the PC, large electric fields are developed between the growing mass of ink and the PC ground plane. Eventually the field exceeds either the ink charge director binding strength or the ink breakdown field, and ink charge is stripped from the ink particles and transferred to the PC surface. Off-press experiments supported this finding.

In the color management system, device gamut is an important prerequisite for effective color management. Currently, device gamut is described by convex hull model. In this method, electronic standard color card is output on certain media, the chromatic values of the color blocks of the color card are measured as vertices to build the three-dimensional space of convex hull. In spite of the simplicity of the description method in manipulation, the factors that can't be ignored are as the following, the relatively representative of the color blocks on the color card and the device gamut has something to do with the factors such as device feature, as well as the surrounding light and device parameters. Near the edge of the convex hull, the device limit color points perhaps locate inside and outside the edge of the convex hull, so the convex hull model can't describe the device gamut exactly. In the research, based on mapping relation of digital image pixel value and its corresponding printed color, printer characterization model is established based on BP neural network with exactitude to a perfect certainty. Then, digital image pixel values with kinds of intervals are taken to calculate the color point sets by the printer characterization model, and the device gamut could be described by the color points sets. By visual method, both the convex hull model and the point set model are compared. The experiment shows that the point set models describe the printer gamut more precise than the convex hull model.