Specialized Print Apps

There are print professionals out there seeking to expand their service offerings into this exciting new profit center. But to do so effectively, they first need to learn more about what PE is and how they can participate in it. At the Experiential Lab in Graph Expo’s Future Print Pavilion, 2012 visitors discovered the many, and growing, applications ranging from RFID to displays and lighting to sensors and batteries. Demonstrations and presentations at last year’s show came courtesy of Flex-Tech Alliance.

“Print service providers can look to integrate simple printed electronics components into functional finished devices,” encouraged IDTechEx CEO Raghu Das. “This is an area of undersupply in the industry—there is a lot of material and component innovation, but few [are] creating complete products.” One company heeding Das’s advice is Novalia, a Cambridge, UK, printing firm where electrical circuits made by printed ink are helping to create a new generation of “intelligent” greeting cards, books, and other interactive paper-based products.

Novalia specializes in designing electronic circuits and controls that are printed onto paper and cardboard using conductive ink through conventional litho and flexo presses, which are attached to relatively inexpensive chips and output devices. Applications have ranged from a tissue box that has a piano built in (to amuse children on long journeys) to pill packaging that remembers when you took the last pill and stores that information to pass back to drug companies for efficacy testing.

At Novalia, a Cambridge, UK, printing firm, electrical circuits made by printed ink are helping to create a new generation of “intelligent” greeting cards, books, and other interactive paper-based products. The company specializes in designing electronic circuits and controls that are printed onto paper and cardboard using conductive ink through conventional litho and flexo presses, which are attached to relatively inexpensive chips and output devices. Applications have ranged from a tissue box that has a piano built in (to amuse children on long journeys) to pill packaging that remembers when you took the last pill and stores that information to pass back to drug companies for efficacy testing.

Here’s how it works: A graphic designer first creates an ordinary image; let’s say a birthday cake with candles. Then an electronics engineer uses graphics software to superimpose a circuit on the image, following the lines of the original design. When this isn’t possible, the engineer makes small changes to the original image.

“It’s almost the opposite way you’d normally design a circuit,” explained managing director Kate Stone, who has a PhD in physics. Touch-sensitive input and light/sound output is coupled with transistor-based intelligence. Novalia offers design, product development and creation services, and works with its partners to coordinate manufacture.

There are two routes to the manufacture of printed electronics: 1) Conventional printers use existing manufacturing facilities to create printed electronics for their existing products, and 2) Electronics manufacturers use printing and packaging processes to create electronic devices for new applications. Novalia works closely with both types of manufacturers but prefers supplying printed electronics directly to print manufacturers because they already have a validated route to market and access to customers.

One example is its proprietary novacode technology. Working with a leading U.K. packaging company, Novalia is developing a way of adding a printed electronic circuit onto a printed pack. The circuit is deposited with no additional printing runs, and the only materials required are available inks. Similar in nature to a barcode, the concept makes use of a product that is already litho printed. The cost of adding the electronics is minimal, the firm said. Once this has passed through a manufacturing development phase, it could be produced on a million boxes per week in a single plant.

Novalia also has developed a new product concept for childrens’ trading card games. Trading cards generally consist of characters that compete against each other. A point scoring system determines which card wins each battle. There have been attempts to use technology to enhance card games, however, most involve using a bulky and expensive reader device The trademarked Novacard concept is simple: Print simple, inexpensive tracks onto the trading cards. The reader device consists of a single battery and four display indicators. The tracks are laid out so that a logic effect is created -- as in the ‘rock, paper, scissors’ game, which is the basis of many such trading card games.