OLED Display Process Module

The Situation

A start-up original equipment manufacturer (OEM) needed to design and manufacture flexible organic light-emitting diode (OLED) prototype equipment utilizing new inkjet printing technology for a large display customer – in six months.

The Challenges

The startup lacked the engineering and manufacturing capacity to design and build both the inkjet printer (their core business) and the accessory UV curing module. Without the needed staff and manufacturing infrastructure already in place, the project was at risk of missing the critical move-in date and delaying the critical start-up of their customer’s entire factory.

The only path for success was to leverage an external partner to help with design and build of the UV curing module.

The Solution

The company handed over the high-level design to Owens Design who took the concept along with customer factory requirements and turned it into a factory ready product.

Owens Design completed the design and manufacturing of triple-stacked UV cure modules to fit within the required factory footprint—all on-time for the required aggressive shipment date. Owens quickly expanded their manufacturing capacity to produce over 50 UV modules containing more than 150 stacked chambers, supporting the rapid growth in demand for large, flexible OLED.

The Results

The timely completion of the UV cure modules enabled the manufacturer’s display client to open a $4B factory whose funding was contingent on volume manufacturing of the final steps of inkjet printing and UV curing. The introduction of this process step enabled flexible OLED displays to be widely adopted in the high-end mobile phone market and become the ubiquitous technology now used in hundreds of millions of handsets.

“Owens Design has gotten me out of several binds over the years. They are really well positioned to work with startups positioned for growth, so we felt they were a good fit for this project. Our long-term relationship started during a difficult time as our start-up pivoted technologies. Owens helped us through those growing pains. Then when we needed them for accelerated growth, they were there to design and build the UV chambers that would ultimately lead to the highest growth period in our company’s history. Our ability to ship them on time changed the industry and enabled flexible OLEDs for mobile phones to dominate the market.”

 – Senior VP of Engineering