A Finnish firm has industrialized and commercialized a smart-surface technology that integrates printed circuitry and discrete electronic components inside three-dimensional molded plastics, creating a seamless, single-piece structure that it says offers “revolutionary design freedom.”
TactoTek Oy, founded in 2011 in Oulu, Finland, describes its Injection Molded Structural Electronics (IMSE™) technology as an advanced form of film insert molding. The 95-employee firm’s core business involves developing and commercializing IMSE technology. It licenses IMSE for automotive applications, and does both small-scale manufacturing and licensing of it for non-automotive customers, according to Dave Rice, the Portland, Oregon-based senior vice president for marketing and business development at TactoTek.
The company also has operations in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Ulm, Germany, and sales offices in Japan, South Korea and Switzerland. TactoTek’s technology currently is finding use primarily in automotive, appliance, medical device, industrial, and wearable/Internet of Things applications. TactoTek in Finland runs two injection molding presses, with 100-ton and 250-ton clamping forces (with another 200-ton press on the way).
IMSE technology enables adding sophisticated electronic functions to light, thin, three-dimensional parts, including surfaces with complex shapes and contours, says Rice. Moreover, he adds, IMSE parts are typically just 2 to 3.5 mm thick, even when they include lighting features, and the integrated electronics can follow the contours of a design. This means that designers “can add electronic features to locations impractical or impossible for traditional electronics, and in shapes that align with their design language and vision”––regardless of whether that’s a designer coffee maker or the door trim of a vehicle.
This offers designers “a new palette of possibilities that enable them to deliver high-value, differentiated user experiences––in terms of three-dimensional form, styling, electronic functionality and total cost efficiency.” Injection molders benefit, meanwhile, since parts that combine both plastics and electronics tend to command higher margins than standard injection molded parts.
Rice notes that design and functional variants can be created easily with a single tool set by changing the surface material or printing. In addition to plastic, IMSE structures can have natural surface materials such as wood and leather.
Making plastics surfaces ‘smart’
IMSE technology turns plastics into smart surfaces by integrating flexible printed circuitry and electronic components such as LED lights into 3D, injection molded structures using standard, high-speed manufacturing methods and equipment. IMSE products can be single- or multi-film structures. The film resin used most often is polycarbonate or thermoplastic polyurethane.
A number of international companies are using TactoTek technology, including DuPont Co., Sun Chemical, Covestro AG, MacDermid, Novem Car Interior Design GmbH, and lighting giant OSRAM, to name a few. Other are licensing IMSE, including firms such as Faurecia, LS Automotive and Nanogate SE.
In one of TactoTek’s most recent use cases, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based PassiveBolt Inc. employed the technology to produce a new home-security product called Shepherd Lock. The product won a CES 2020 Innovation Award in the Smart Home category at January’s huge consumer technology show.
Shepherd Lock is a simple add-on that allows homeowners to keep their existing lockset and keys, while converting it into a touch-activated device. Employing their smart phone as a sort of “key fob,” users can lock and unlock their door both inside and outside with a touch. It involves a mechatronic module that works based on simple touch––no fingerprints or biometrics needed. The product––which goes on sale this month––uses a patent-pending combination of sensors and artificial intelligence to actively monitor your lock around the clock, and sends an alert to the homeowner via a secure mobile app if the lock is tampered with.
PassiveBolt chose to use Covestro’s Makrolon® polycarbonate for the lock’s silver-colored enclosure, black face plate, and all the plastic parts. “We’ve done considerable work with Covestro as we’ve industrialized IMSE technology,” Rice noted, “and identified the materials stacks and processing required for high-yield manufacturing, high-quality cosmetics and lifetime reliability. That learning, and the validated materials combinations are then used in customer projects, most of which are in automotive today.”
In another example, TactoTek compares the particulars of a vehicle’s overhead, ceiling-mounted control module made via conventional means vs. one made using IMSE.
Lighter, smaller, simpler
The traditional, bulky structure comprises 64 individual mechanical parts (excluding mounted components), and more than 30 different assembly phases in production. The assembled unit is 45mm thick and weighs between 650g and 1.4 kg. This is what we see in high-end vehicles today, particularly in SUVs and trucks, from most manufacturers.
Then let’s look at IMSE. It has the same functionality, but in a totally different form factor. Using just one injection molded part that includes both mechanics and electronics, a “smart surface,” and a small printed circuit board assembly, the part thickness is just 3mm, weighs in at only 200g. Additionally, the process requires only a single injection molding tool, reducing tooling and design costs and no assembly. (Some OEMs smile as soon as they realized that this part cannot rattle or squeak.)
TactoTek also has worked with Movesense, an open development platform for motion sensing and biometrics that was created by Finnish sports watch expert Suunto. Movesense’s easy tools allow one to build their own wearable device quickly and cost-efficiently, to enable the tracking of sports, health, equipment, machinery, or basically anything that moves.
Working together, the parties found a way to integrate electronic functionality into fabrics. Typically, TactoTek notes, the challenge with truly wearable electronics––not the wrist device––is the wear and tear they undergo. Clothing, especially in sports, is worn under many times extreme conditions, and they have to be washed constantly.
Adding electronics to fabrics
“With our IMSE ‘wash-and-go’ material stack, we were able to make this smart connector for Suunto Movesense,” TactoTek said. “We developed and manufactured a fully encapsulated smart connector that can be integrated in clothing, ski shoes, etc. It is attached to the sensor part, and it provides important contextual information on the location of the sensor.” Because the smart connector uses silver inks with high elongation values, it can withstand more than 10,000 twist and bends and more than 50 washing cycles in a washing machine.
“The materials that we use in IMSE solutions come from global leaders in their fields. Recently there have been significant advances in conductive inks, dielectrics and electronic components that expand the capabilities of IMSE solutions. TactoTek puts all of these materials through its own tests, most importantly by processing the material stacks used to create parts,” the company states.
“Our current offering includes touching, sensing, illumination and wireless connectivity, all delivered in light, thin, durable 3D structural electronics. Those features can be combined to create high value, differentiated user experiences required by today’s consumers.”
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Excellent ! Very interesting !
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best wishes – Roger Newill – [email protected]
Flexible electronics are being designed into a wide range of products on the market today, including both consumer and industrial segments.