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FEBRUARY 2021 I PCB007 MAGAZINE 65 PiXDRO, therefore, has a lot of experience to share; the in-house laboratory, called the Print- Lab (Figure 1), hosts a number of our tools in several configurations. ese enable demon- stration and consultancy work all through the year. is is where the team of Wouter Brok, innovation manager, oen astonishes us by bridging inkjet printing to unexplored mar- kets. We welcome interested customers to per- sonally experience what is behind the scenes of an inkjet printing process development; by necessity, we recently became better at doing this remotely. Starkey: anks for filling in the background, Luca. Could we talk about some recent de- velopments in inkjet printing technology? I've heard the saying "Keep calm and keep on printing." How is that possible? Gautero: When explaining the capabilities of inkjet for manufacturing, I oen can see the doubt in the minds of the receiving partner. Everybody has had experience with a cheap inkjet printer at home, with high maintenance costs (expensive ink) and missing features, such as color. e answer starts by moving the attention from an A4 toward ceramic tiles, billboards, and other large surfaces. Industrial graph- ical inkjet printers create these products. is graphical sector and its machinery are actually the right comparison term. In fact, the growth of this industry enabled the quick development of high quality printheads during the last decade. e inkjet tools on the market for solder mask have all made their decision based on these, now available, advanced tech- nologies. At SUSS MicroTec Netherlands, we target low operation and maintenance costs. is keeps the business meaningful for the customer. Starkey: Indeed, the bridge between the graph- ical industry and printed electronics explains the recent history. However, it is still not clear how you can create an inkjet printer that al- ways works. Gautero: When the PiXDRO team formulated the solder mask requirements a few years back, knowledge of several types of printheads was essential. e modularity of the in-house R&D printer and our PrintLab provided the neces- Figure 1: The PrintLab while action is taking place.