XXL-Franke-Torque Bearing guides laser at new display repair machine

A South Korean OLED display manufacturer has developed an innovative machine to correct unavoidable errors in display production more quickly. Franke built an exceptionally large bespoke torque drive for the machine with one meter diameter.

Whether in smartphones, tablets, speedometers or televisions - LED displays are omnipresent in our everyday lives. A huge market that is far from being saturated. However, there is a problem with production: many of the displays produced are defective. Their screens have non-functioning black pixels or pixels in the wrong colour. The cause is defective LEDs or faulty circuit boards. Even with greatest care, such errors are hardly avoidable in production. The displays affected by these errors are rejects and thus a burden on productivity.
 

Innovative, high-throughput repair machine

A South Korean OLED display manufacturer has now developed a new type of laser machine to efficiently repair such defective LED displays. The principle: a laser beam is used to repair faulty connections of the conductor paths. Similar devices already exist on the market, but none with a comparable throughput. In principle, the new machine is suitable for all types of LED displays, including micro-LED and OLED displays.

Customised Franke torque drive in XXL design

A central component in the laser repair machine is a very large Franke bearing with torque-motor. Inner diameter: 1,000mm. Weight: 640 kilograms. The bearing is used to rotate several mirrors, which deflect and guide the laser beam. Since the display manufacturer could not find a torque drive of the required size from other suppliers, he turned to the Franke representative in South Korea.

Franke then developed a customised solution. The colossus built by Franke runs very smoothly and precisely due to the damping effects of the integrted wire-race bearing. In order to guarantee the required nominal speed of 150 revolutions per minute, an angular contact ball bearing arrangement was chosen for highly dynamic applications. Precision was also very important in this project. "In terms of accuracy, we have reached a new level with this bearing" says Arne Jankowski from Frankes technical sales. Based on this, the display manufacturer was able to further increase the system accuracy via electronical correction measures.

The result: fewer rejects with less effort

With the new machine, pixel defects in LED displays can be efficiently repaired. A large number of previously discarded displays can be used again this way without any losses and meet the high quality requirements. The special feature: The machine works particularly fast thanks to its innovative design. Therefore productivity in display manufacturing has been improved in two ways: through less scrap and through the high throughput in the repair.