Printing quality with flexible ink

[gsobiegraj]

Hello,

It’s been a REALLY long time for us to start working with the printer, which we bought last year. We wanted to use it for quick prototyping in our company, but it seems that this is not possible!

First of all, normal ink is absolutely a no-go here, due to SVHC list - it’s forbidden for us to buy this material. So we have to live with flexible ink on FR-4 boards. But still, this yields very poor results. Here are the problems that we have to deal with:

• Sometimes the paste oozes from the back of the syringe instead of going out through the nozzle
• Even if the paste dispensing calibration process completes with perfect results, the paste thickness changes during the print so much, that it is impossible to reach repeatable amounts on the print
• The paste oozes during the head movement, so it creates small shorts between traces
• Soldering is very tricky and the traces have VERY high resistance.

All those problems render the printer an extremely expensive paper weight. So could you please let me know what can be done to improve the printing quality? I’m attaching the example print from our system. We are using Flying Fox ink and the newest software update for flexible printing.

[DanV]

I’m a brand new user and learning the secrets of the trade … I’m getting very similar results when the ink has not been out of the fridge for at least one hour, but the printing quality improves as the ink spends more time at room temperature - as in, using it to print more boards in that batch. I suspect this uneven printing has to do with thinner ink in the nozzle (used up during calibration) vs thicker (colder) ink that comes out from the syringe as the actual printing proceeds. I also found ink that seeped back around the piston in one used cartridge … Please advise, and thank you!