This paper shows results of research on transparent electrode manufacturing processes using thermal imprinting and IPL technique. By using an IPL process instead of the existing heat sintering process, the sheet resistance value was reduced to about 1/ 10. Additionally, sintering time could be reduced from 1 hour to 1 ms. As a result of measuring the transmittance to determine the excellence of the transparent electrode produced in this way, it was confirmed that it had a high transmittance of 94.4% compared to the substrate with a very high bending stability compared to the existing ITO transparent electrode. These results show that the transparent electrode manufacturing method proposed in this study is very useful.

It is challenging to automate the shoe upper adhesive spraying process using a robot due to the three-dimensional curved shape of the shoe upper. This paper proposes a method to automate the shoe upper adhesive spraying process with a 3-D measuring device and an industrial robot. The adhesive spraying automation process consists of the following steps, First, a transformation matrix calibration is performed to make the points measured by the 3-D measuring device and the robot end-effector points the same. Second, the shoe gauge line that connects the shoe adhesive spaying line measured by the 3D measurement device is smoothed. Lastly, the target points of the robot end-effector to quantitatively spray the adhesive are selected and the robot end-effector position/orientation to operate the robot is generated. The proposed method was validated on the test bed of a shoe upper spray system. With the method proposed in this paper, even non-robot experts can measure shoe gauge line data with a 3-D measuring device and the shoe upper adhesive spraying process can be automated without manually operating a robot.

Equipment used in the semiconductor manufacturing process generally have a flow rate control system for each nozzle to regulate the flow rate of chemical solution fed to the wafer. In existing flow rate control systems, flow rate overshoots occur because of excess pressure and the control rates of the overshoots are less because additional operation time is required for the electric valves. In this study, to address the shortcomings of existing flow rate control systems, we proposed a method to improve the speed of flow rate control by introducing a constant pressure valve. The constant pressure valve controls the flow path via gas pressure, thereby facilitating prompt control and efficiently improving the flow rate overshoot caused by the pressure overshoot. To improve the control speed and control stability of the constant pressure valve, a three-step automatic control speed application function was developed, and the measured valve, control amount mapping function, and pre-open function were defined to reduce the initial control speed. The experimental results showed a measurement precision within 1% of the target flow rate and stable control performance as well as control speed reduction from 3 seconds in existing systems to 2 seconds or less for the proposed system.

In the printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing industry, the yield is an important management factor as it significantly affects the product cost and quality. However, in real situations, it is difficult to ensure a high yield in a manufacturing process, because the products are manufactured through numerous nanoscale manufacturing operations. Thus, for improving the yield, it is necessary to analyze the key process parameters and equipment parameters that result in a low yield. In this study, critical equipment parameters that affect the yield were extracted through a mutual analysis of the equipment parameters (x) and process parameters (y) in the plastic ball grid array (PBGA) manufacturing process. To this end, the study uses the correlation coefficient to apply the heuristic algorithm that extracts critical parameters that keep the redundancy among the equipment parameters to a minimum and exert maximum impact on the critical process parameters. Additionally, by using the general regression neural network technique, the effects of the critical equipment parameters on the process parameters were confirmed. The test results were applied to the PBGA production line and an improvement in the yield was confirmed.

The recent crisis of environmental pollution and resource depletion has become a major global issue, resulting in an increasing interest in remanufacturing in many countries. However, manufacturing for environmental protection is considered an additional cost factor by most companies. Therefore, governments worldwide have actively implemented remanufacturing policies to encourage the participation of numerous companies in the remanufacturing industry. As an eco-friendly technology, remanufacturing has impacted the environmental improvement and resource savings by reducing raw materials and production processes. In particular, the effect of machine tool and automobile part remanufacturing is very remarkable, since most parts are reusable. In this study, the standardization technology for remanufacturing process of machine tools is developed by remanufacturing of used vertical machining center. Based on the work operation sheet for establishing the process, the remanufacturing process chart and program were developed. The performance evaluation of machining centers before and after remanufacturing was also executed, to check the performance improvement of the remanufactured product. The performance evaluation criteria were established to improve reliability.