December 8, 2006
Development of "Automatic Repair Equipment for Color Filters"
- Contributing to cost reduction of liquid crystal display manufacturing -
NTN Corporation (hereafter, NTN) is marketing new products targeting the repair of flat panel displays (FPDs). Specifically, these products involve a "multi repair system," integrating ink and polish repair functions into a single unit. These products also have a version of the "high speed & high quality color filter repair equipment," to reduce the time of the ink repair function.
NTN has developed "automatic repair equipment for color filters" by adding the automatic detection and correction of defects (color, abnormality, and position) to this equipment
In the repair process of color filter panels, two processes are used. 1.Protrusion polishing equipment makes repairs by polishing away foreign particle protrusion on the panel by means of tape polishing. 2.Ink repair equipment is used when a color defect portion needs to be removed. Applying ink repairs the resulting white area.
Of these, the protrusion polishing repair equipment has become an automated operation by utilizing image processing. But, in the past, the ink repair equipment has not been automated because of the number of defect types and the complicated operation process.
"Automatic repair equipment for color filters," developed by NTN, enables automatic identification of the position, type and color of defects by making full use of the originally developed image processing technique, which is suitable for the detection of these defects on a color filter panel. This process improves work efficiency and saves manpower through the automation of a series of repair operations such as the removal (laser cutting) of the defects and coating of ink.In addition, each piece of NTN equipment used in the repair of FPDs, such as "automatic repair equipment for color filters," uses the original NTN "Positioning technique" and "Fine coating technique."
<Features>
| (1) | Identifies the defect position by using the original technique of image processing, and conducts automatic cutting (laser cutting) and automatic coating according to the type and color of defects. |
| (2) | Improvement of work efficiency and reduction of manpower as a result of automatic repairing. |
<Defect subject to repair>
| Defects on color filter panels for liquid crystal displays (black defect, white defect, mixed color) |
<External View of Equipment>
<Repairing Process>
