Coatema Hosts Open House Day

Live demonstrations of leading edge technology for advanced high-tech research projects were the focus of an Open House at the Coatema Coating Machinery GmbH in Dormagen, Germany on Feb. 19. More than 100 international visitors from industry, research institutes and universities attended the day-long event at one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive facilities of the type.

Dr. Andreas Giessmann, president of Coatema, opened the event with a company introduction. An detailed overview of the company and their newest machinery was given by vice president Thomas Kolbusch. R&D project manager Dr. Nico Meyer introduced Coatema’s current activities in the field of research and development. Four current research projects were presented by the coordinators of these projects.

The aims, procedures and latest results of the following projects were presented:
• EELICON (Electrochromic displays) presented by Dr. Uwe Posset – Fraunhofer ISC.
• Flexlas (Laser Roll-to-Roll) presented by Dr. Malte Schulz-Ruhtenberg – Fraunhofer ILT.
• Clean 4 Yield (Contamination and defect control for large scale organic electronic) presented by Dr. Michiel Coenen – TNO Netherland.
• ML2 (MultiLayer – MicroLab) presented by Christoph Baum – Fraunhofer IPT.

Following the presentations the guests were offered guided tours of the entire R&D Center with its complement of laboratory, pilot scale and production coating, laminating machinery, testing and meeting facilities. The tour included a unique opportunity to see a newly completed custom ordered Prepreg production line and another custom production line for OLEDs and printed electronics ready to be delivered to customers.

The afternoon included live demonstrations to show different techniques of coating and printing. This included a slot die demonstration on a versatile Coatema Click&Coat line, a flexible construction concept that allows a wide range of individual process modules to be combined. Other demonstrations included the roll-to-roll lab scale Smartcoater printing fluorescent inks with a gravure roller, and a small single sheet Easycoater using a slot die coating head to demonstrate curtain coating. Dr. Klaus Peter Crone, Coatema R&D manager, explained the various coating techniques during the demonstrations and concluded the day with an educational Drying Technologies presentation.