Development of a novel manufacturing method for a contactless handling system using a variable outlet restriction

Improved handling methods are required in order to decrease the manufacturing cost of solar cells and flat panel display. A potential method would be to use a contactless handling system based on air bearing technology. As the name implies, the substrate levitates on a thin film (~10 μm) of air. The viscous shear force is used to exert a lateral force on the substrate. In order to be able to control the position of the substrate, this force needs to be controlled over time.In this research, this is achieved by varying the film geometry of the outlet. This thin film (~50 μm) is formed between a pin in a slightly oversized hole. The full system is comprised of multiple unit cells, which makes manufacturing using traditional subtractive manufacturing techniques very complicated. During this research, a novel manufacturing method was developed, where the dimensions of the outlet film are relatively insensitive for manufacturing errors