Printing spacers on LCD substrates
AssigneeSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
InventorsBong-Sung Seo, So-Youn Park, Jeong-Uk Heo
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A spacer ink printing apparatus for printing spacers on an LCD substrate includes a main body, a pressing roller and a spacer ink removing portion. The apparatus may further include a spacer ink guiding portion and/or a spacer ink spreading portion. The pressing roller is combined with the main body and rotates so as to press a spacer ink sprayed onto a printing plate into each of a plurality of receiving recesses of the printing plate. The spacer ink removing portion is combined with the main body and serves to remove any excess spacer ink from the printing plate, thereby reducing wasted spacer ink and decreasing the manufacturing cost of LCDs produced with the apparatus.
Claims20
A spacer ink printing apparatus, comprising:
- a main body;
- a pressing roller combined with the main body and arranged to rotate so as to press a spacer ink sprayed onto an upper surface of a printing plate into a plurality of recesses contained therein;
- and,
- a spacer ink removing portion combined with the main body and operable to remove excess spacer ink from the printing plate after the spacer ink has been pressed into the recesses by the pressing roller.
A method of manufacturing a display panel, the method comprising:
- pressing a spacer ink sprayed onto an upper surface of a printing plate into each of a plurality of receiving recesses in the upper surface of the printing plate by using a spacer ink printing apparatus, wherein the spacer ink printing apparatus comprises:
- a main body;
- a pressing roller combined with the main body and arranged to both rotate and translate relative to the printing plate so as to press the spacer ink sprayed onto the upper surface of the printing plate uniformly into each of the receiving recesses therein;
- and,
- a spacer ink removing portion combined with the main body and adapted to remove an excessive portion of the spacer ink not pressed into the receiving recesses from the upper surface of the printing plate for reuse in the printing apparatus;
- rotating a printing roller over the surface of the printing plate so as to adhere the spacer ink contained in the respective recesses of the printing plate onto an outer surface of the printing roller;
- rotating the printing roller over a first substrate so as to print the spacer ink adhered to the outer surface of the printing roller onto the first substrate at selected locations thereon;
- forming a seal line around a periphery of the first substrate;
- dropping a plurality of droplets of a liquid crystal material onto a second substrate;
- and,
- combining the first substrate with the second substrate such that a layer of the liquid crystal material is sealed in a space therebetween.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.