Eastman Kodak | Additive Manufacture of Copper Micro-Wire Transparent Heaters

Chris O'Connor |VP, Global Business Group

Many flexible heater products are produced using printing techniques. As applications requiring transparent antennas increase in number, it makes sense to use similar additive manufacturing techniques for flexible heaters. In all cases, each mass-produced heater is a replicate of the last, making their manufacture well suited for “analog” print manufacturing, such as flexography. The use of high-resolution printing enables the additive manufacturing of custom transparent heater designs – built from copper micro-wires for transparency and function. This talk will provide an overview of the requirements for different transparent heater applications and how these requirements can be achieved with copper micro-wire patterns. Examples and data will be shared from lab-scale and production scale evaluations.