Forming Tools With No Gaps For LCD And Photovoltaic Cell Manufacturing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing forming apparatuses face challenges in maintaining precise tolerances, preventing fouling, and avoiding destructive interferences during the forming process, particularly in pressure forming zones where unwanted material can be trapped, leading to inferior products and excessive stresses.
Innovation Solution
A method and apparatus where forming tools are advanced in a guiding circuit with no gaps between adjacent tools in the pressure forming zone, ensuring constant pressure and controlled temperature, and using a temperature control system to maintain optimal operating conditions, allowing for the formation of materials like LCDs and photovoltaic cells without material entrapment.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If forming tools are moved about a curve on a continuous linkage, then the forming tools can be brought into position, but gaps and join lines are created in the finished product
Solution Approach 1:
The forming tool is divided into multiple independently controllable segments or zones along its length. Each segment can be positioned and oriented independently, allowing the tool to follow a curved path while maintaining continuous contact with the material without creating gaps or join lines. This segmentation enables precise control over the forming interface throughout the entire tool length.
2Temperature
If forming tools are brought to operating temperature, then forming can proceed, but fouling may occur during the heating process
Solution Approach 1:
The forming tools are pre-heated in a controlled manner before actual forming operations begin. The heating system activates the tools to operating temperature in advance, and only after the tools reach the required temperature does material feeding commence. This preliminary heating action prevents fouling by ensuring the tools are already at forming temperature when material contact occurs.
3Stress or pressure
If pressure is applied in the forming zone, then material forming is achieved, but unwanted material can be trapped between adjacent forming tools
Solution Approach 1:
The continuous linkage mechanical system that creates gaps between forming tools is replaced with a system where forming tools are independently supported and positioned. This substitution eliminates the mechanical constraint that causes gaps, allowing adjacent tools to maintain continuous contact with the material under pressure without creating trapping zones, thereby preventing defects while maintaining forming pressure.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach ensures consistent product quality by preventing material entrapment and excessive stress, allowing for precise formation of materials with minimal defects and improved process efficiency.
Implementation Method 1
there is a temperature control system to move the forming tools to a temperature or temperatures in an operating range or to maintain such temperature(s)
Data Source
AI summary
A method of forming a material includes presenting a formable material to a space between opposing forming surfaces of opposed forming tools from whence said material is carried as said opposing forming surfaces advance in a machine direction. The method includes pressurising, as said opposing forming surfaces advance, said material between said opposing forming surfaces in a reduced space between said opposing forming surfaces defining at least in part a pressure forming zone, said reduced space between said opposing forming surfaces being maintained constant until a form of at least one of said opposing forming surfaces is profiled into said material and is retainable thereon. The method also includes releasing the profiled material from between the said opposing forming surfaces, as the space of the pressure forming zone increases between said opposing forming surfaces as the opposing forming surfaces advance.