Inside piezo drop on demand printheads
Wednesday 30th June - Thursday 1st July, 2010
Course fee - GBP 740, Euro 850, US$ 1,175
Location & accommodation
Back to Summer School 2010
Here Rob Harvey and Mike Willis will take you through the basics of piezo materials and their properties, how they are used as actuators within printheads, other aspects of printhead design, printhead operation, crosstalk, reliability and lifetime issues, and the special considerations for deposition and ink jet as a manufacturing process.
Cambridge, UK
Rob has over twenty years experience in the field of ink jet, firstly with Cambridge Consultants and then with ink jet printhead manufacturer Xaar.
At Xaar he was a key member of the development team that took the company from a start-up to a world-leading technology company. He is named as inventor on more than thirty ink jet patents, covering a broad range of product and process innovations.
Rob was responsible for transferring Xaar's technology portfolio to a number of its licensees, notably IBM in Sweden and Brother and Kyocera in Japan. He also took a lead role in applying Xaar's ink jet into a range of non-graphics applications including manufacture of flat panel displays, printed circuit boards, mouldless 3D plastics and tissue engineering.
Rob also has a background in instrumentation, having worked on the development of electron and acoustic microscopes, ion-beam instruments and sensors. He left Xaar in 2009 and is now working on a start-up venture to use an evolution of ink jet technology to manufacture precision nano-particles for a variety of industrial and medical applications.
Managing Director, Pivotal Resources Ltd
Cambridge, UK
Mike Willis is the founder and Managing Director of Pivotal Resources, an international marketing and technical consultancy specialising in electronic printing and the graphic arts. He has worked in these industries for the past 20 years, accumulating considerable experience in a wide range of imaging technologies. Recognised as an industry expert, he regularly speaks and gives tutorials at printing conferences in Europe and North America. In addition he is the publisher of Directions, a service that monitors ink jet patents and significant product launches.
In May 1990 Mike was a founder member of Xaar, a company set up to exploit high resolution piezo ink jet technology. Later, while responsible for business development, he promoted the technology, forging links with printer companies world-wide resulting in Xaar's first licensee, a major Japanese business equipment manufacturer.
Mike began his career at Gestetner Limited, working on a variety of photocopier projects, and was responsible for the development of image processes. He graduated from the Polytechnic of Central London in 1976 with Honours in Photographic Sciences.
