The semiconductor industry is the largest consumer of mechatronics technology. This should not come as a surprise to anyone. The amount of slicing, dicing, probing, handling, packaging and inspection that is required to turn sand into a working microelectronic device is amazing. The number of axes of stepping motors, brushless servo motors, linear motors, voice coil motors, vacuum rated robots, high bandwidth amplifiers, position feedback devices that are needed to support chip manufacture is staggering.
The mechatronics challenge is ongoing in semiconductor applications as feature sizes continue to shrink from millionths of an inch to features that are measured in wavelengths of light. The industry is now in the deep ultraviolet range where position measurement is truly challenging. Unfortunately, the cost of technology development for 450mm wafer and deep ultraviolet feature sizes is so expensive that it is beyond the reach of any single company.
While electronic assembly is the top level of electronic integration, many of the same dynamics are appearing. Feature size and accuracy has become smaller and placement speed is greater than 50,000 per hour in the high end machines. These machines are dominated by linear motors and high performance controls that have to manage some fairly high moving masses making the application a major challenge to insure repeatability.
The cost of chip fabs is now in the billions of dollars. High throughput assembly machines are often $250,000 or more. Populating a serious manufacturing facility requires millions of dollars of investment. Most contract manufacturers cannot supply products unless they can run 10,000 at a time. All of which make electronics the next frontier requiring innovation.
In order to profitably supply products in small quantities an alternative approach is required. Enter the small startup. The Circuit Scribe from ElectronInks is poised to turn conventional wisdom on its head. This company is approaching electronic assemlby from a completely different perspective and the potential is staggering.
The Circuit Scribe is a roller ball pen that “writes” with conductive ink. that makes working circuits on paper and other materials. The ink dries immediately and produces working circuits in any shape you can imagine. While pricing has not been formally set, if you get one on the KickStarter campaign for $20, you can immediately see how inexpensive this approach becomes. Printed circuit board fabrication and turnaround times are gone. If you make a mistake, no big deal, just re-draw what you were working on. For teaching and learning electronics this is the ultimate in simplicity and elegance.
Taking this approach to the next level with inks that have other electronic behaviors will make understanding electronics much more engaging and provide the same creative boost that 3D printing has brought to other parts of the manufacturing markets.
Filed Under: Mechatronic Tips