Computer Vision Aided Print Pattern Generation in Inkjet Printed Electronics

Abstract

Inkjet printed electronics is one of the new promising electronics manufacturing techniques out there. It has become a widely adopted manufacturing method especially in the field of low-cost electronics. This thesis considers an application of inkjet printed electronics where conductive ink is used for printing the connections between the components on a single unit called a module. The base module is fabricated by molding the components together such that the connection points of the components form a level surface. After this, the wiring is printed on top. Because of the inaccuracies in the fabrication process, there is often a mismatch between the designed print pattern and the target module. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce an online print pattern generation system that uses computer vision to detect the locations of the module components and then modifies the print pattern accordingly. By integrating the print pattern generation system as a part of the manufacturing process, not only is it possible to print functioning modules but also multiple modules can be printed at the same time. This way the capabilities of inkjet printed electronics can be more efficiently harnessed. The experiments prove that the developed print pattern correction system together with the proposed imaging setup are able to produce desired results in practice. In addition to successfully printing ten modules at once, it is also shown that the developed system is robust and generalizes well for different types of modules. /Kir10