Screen Holdings Co., Ltd.

Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

Tomoyuki Komura

Masafumi Kawagoe

Mikio Masuichi

Kenji Fujii

Kazutaka Taniguchi

Hiroyuki Ueno

Ryuichi Hayama

Fuminori Asa

Kuniko Teraki

Miyoshi Nakajima

Tetsuo Tanaka

Takuji Kato

Shuji Muramoto

In a forward movement, an article is conveyed to a printing device via a transfer position while being kept mounted in a first holder for printing by the printing device. The article is returned to the transfer position together with the first holder after printing. An article to be printed after the above article is mounted into a second holder in parallel with at least a part of the forward movement, the printing and a return movement. This is capable of printing on the articles in a short throughput time also when the articles are those having a three-dimensional shape such as bottles and in-vehicle components.

Printing system and printing method

A carrier and a substrate are aligned even if an imager cannot be simultaneously focused on alignment marks formed on both the carrier and the substrate. Center of gravity positions Gof an alignment pattern element APon a substrate and Gof an alignment pattern element APon a transparent blanket are calculated by image processing from an image IM imaged via the blanket by a CCD camera. The position of the center of gravity Gmis specified by a process associated with edge extraction from the image imaged with the alignment pattern element APon the blanket being in focus. High spatial frequency components are removed and low frequency components are extracted for the alignment pattern element APon the substrate imaged out of focus to have a blurred outline, and the position of the center of gravity Gis specified from an extraction result.

Alignment method, transfer method and transfer apparatus

The supply of a negative pressure to an opening P(+) adjacent to an opening P() is stopped by switching a suction valve connected to the opening P(+) from an open state to a closed state while keeping a positive pressure valve connected thereto closed. Then, near the opening P(+), a force for holding a blanket becomes gradually weaker against a pressure force in a pressurized space. Associated with that, an air component in the pressurized space flows into a space between a portion of the blanket vertically above the opening P(+) and an upper surface, whereby the blanket portion is lifted from the upper surface and brought into contact with the lower surface of a printing plate. In this way, a contact area is slowly and stably widened while a sudden change of a pressure in the pressurized space SPis suppressed.

Pattern forming apparatus and pattern forming method

A print section patterns a coating layer to form a pattern layer on a carrier and then transfers the pattern layer to a substrate. A controller obtains a first carrier thickness by measuring the thickness of the carrier carrying the coating layer and adjusts a gap between the carrier carrying the coating layer and the printing plate based on the first carrier thickness immediately before the coating layer is patterned. The controller also obtains a second carrier thickness by measuring the thickness of the carrier carrying the pattern layer and adjusts a gap between the carrier carrying the pattern layer and the substrate based on the second carrier thickness immediately before the pattern layer is transferred.

Printing apparatus and printing method with measurement of a carrier thickness

A substrate transfer apparatus provided with a first substrate transfer mechanism having a first substrate holding hand which is movable while holding a substrate; and a second substrate transfer mechanism having a second substrate holding hand for receiving and transferring a substrate directly from and to the first substrate holding hand. The apparatus has a positioning mechanism disposed, in a moving passage of a substrate held by the first substrate holding hand, independently from the first substrate transfer mechanism, and having a positioning contact portion for regulating the movement of a substrate such that the substrate is positioned at a predetermined position on the first substrate holding hand.

Substrate transfer apparatus and substrate transfer method

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Kyoto, Japan

Tomoyuki Komura