Manufacturing Technology for Engineered Piezo Solutions:
Fast Time to Market

PI Ceramic employs a large number of modern production techniques which make it possible to fulfill custom engineered requirements for medium-sized and small production runs in very short times, as well as to manage the transition to large production runs reliably and in expensively.
 

Ceramic shaping processes

The basic technology for the manufactoring of piezoceramic components is the pressing of shaped bodies using spraydried granular material. This is achieved using high-capacity presses with up to 1 MN compacting force. The shaped bodies are either manufactured true-to-size, taking into account the sintering contraction, or with machining excesses which are removed to achieve the required precision. By using high-production inboard diamond sawing equipment, it is possible to manufacture reasonably priced components (disks, plates, etc.) with a thickness as low as 0.2 mm. Modern ultrasonic machining techniques are used to manufacture thin-walled tubes with wall thicknesses of 0.5 mm as standard products.

Cofiring technology is available, in particular for the production of multilayer components (PICMA® series). In it, after the application of noble metal electrodes by means of special screen printing techniques and subsequent lamination, a ceramic film of at least 25 µm - made in a process known as tape casting - is applied and sintered in a onestep process.
 

Jointing and assembling technology at PI Ceramic

PI Ceramic has comprehensive know-how and many years of experience in the manufacture of piezoceramic components and subsystems.

Soldering Processes, Inspection

Piezo components with connecting wires are manufactured by trained staff using hand-soldering processes. Automatic soldering equipment is used to solder miniaturized components. Soldered joints which are required to be extremely reliable (billions of cycles of flex, expansion and contraction) undergo special visual inspections. This is done by using optical methods ranging from stereo microscopes to camera inspection systems, depending on the specific requirements.

Mounting and Assembling Technology at PI Ceramic

The jointing of components, e. g. with adhesive, is carried out in batch production using automated equipment which executes the necessary jointing procedure (e. g. curing of epoxy adhesives) and hence guarantees uniform quality.
The choice of adhesive and the curing regime are optimized for each product, taking into consideration the properties of the materials being joined and the intended operational conditions. Dosing and positioning devices which have been designed in-house are used for complicated special orders. Our own piezoceramic stack actuators (PICA™ series), classical bender actuators and high-power acoustic components, all of which are manufactured using jointing processes, have shown reliability in terms of billions of cycles or years of service live in the semiconductor industry, medical industry and aerospace industry.

Custom Piezo Stack Assembly


Custom Piezo Disc and Bender Assemblies