Can screen printing achieve high throughput for commercial production?
High throughput is one of the major advantages of screen printing; large numbers of components can be produced quickly, without impairing process control. The standard printable area of a suitable screen printer such as the DEK Europa is 510mm x 518mm, which allows a large area of raw membrane or electrode material to be coated quickly – effectively producing many units simultaneously. Moreover, the high level of automation incorporated into the Europa platform enables a very fast cycle time, currently about seven seconds, allowing successive substrates to be produced at a very high rate of throughput. One of our targets for development is to reduce the cycle time still further, which will allow production of fuel cell components to become even more cost-effective. It is important to note that this high-speed operation is combined with very high process repeatability, maximising the number of “good units” produced per hour; this is the figure of merit that truly defines the throughput
