Development of a gravure offset printing system for the printing electrodes of flat panel display

A gravure offset printing system composed of a roll-to-roll web-providing apparatus, a cup-type encapsulated doctoring blade, a flat gravure plate, and CCDs for line-width measurement has been devised for printing the electrodes of flat panel display (FPD) devices. This system may be characterized as a small experimental system capable of carrying out printing tests prior to using a huge gravure offset printing system for mass production. The conceptual design of this gravure offset printing system is focused on conducting the reliability accelerating test and on mimicking the huge mass-production printing process required for FPD parts such as plasma display panel electrodes. Using the fabricated prototype, printing experiments were repeated semi-automatically 300 times. It was found that it requires several bursts of idle printing for stabilization, that the widths of the printed pattern continue increasing little by little, and that the deviation in the width of the printed pattern increases as the number of printings is repeated. These increasing rates could constitute an index of printing reliability.