This study investigated effects of energy levels, pulse durations, and pulse frequencies during an IPL (Intense Pulsed Light) sintering process on surface morphology and resistance of screen-printed Ag patterns on PET substrates. Surface characteristics, including primary profile (Pa), roughness (Ra), thickness, and sheet resistance, were measured before and after sintering. At fixed energy levels (13.18, 32.96, and 46.14 kW), increasing pulse counts (2, 5, and 7) at 6 ms durations significantly increased Pa and thickness, while Ra was not changed. In contrast, higher pulse counts (4, 10, and 14) at 3 ms durations improved surface roughness by reducing Ra. Statistical analysis (Paired T-test) confirmed these results. Sheet resistance analysis showed that lower pulse counts at 6 ms caused greater variability in resistance, stabilizing with higher counts. At 3 ms, surface resistance decreased with higher pulse counts, showing reduced variability. These results suggest that adjusting pulse conditions and counts during the sintering process can optimize both electrical properties and uniformity. Additionally, morphological changes before and after sintering indicated that these adjustments might influence upper-layer printability in multilayer printing. The study highlights the importance of considering both functional and morphological characteristics during sintering for optimized production of printed electronic devices.

The Forming Limit Diagram (FLD) is a criterion used to assess the formability of sheet metal during a manufacturing process. Traditionally, FLDs are obtained through manual measurements using Mylar tape or through the use of automatic deformation measurement systems such as ARMIS and ARGUS. However, the use of Mylar tape is not user-friendly and can result in errors. Additionally, the cost of using automatic measuring equipment is high. To address these challenges, we propose a method that utilizes a low-cost USB digital microscope and the Python-based open-source library, OpenCV, to obtain forming limit diagrams. This approach allows for the measurement of deformation on specimens by analyzing circles printed on them. To evaluate the performance of this method, a circular grid was printed on a sus430 0.3 t specimen and a nakajima test was conducted. The strain data obtained using this system was then compared to the FLD obtained with the ARGUS system. The results confirmed that the formability of sheet metal can be assessed at a lower cost using our proposed method.

Various species of insects display vivid colors, widely known as ‘structural color’ due to their optical interference. Morpho butterflies are famous for their brilliant iridescent colors, which arise from the photonic-nanostructures of optical interference on their wings. In this paper, we outline the results of a comparative study of the optical properties of bio-inspired Morpho butterfly structures with the widely known Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR), conducted using a rigorous coupled-wave analysis (RCWA) method for the two structures. Almost analogous tendencies were observed for both Morpho and DBR structures. With variation in the surrounding media, however, Morpho structures showed an obvious peak shift while no significant changes were observed in DBR, which can be applicable.

This paper presents a new method to determine sensitivity coefficients of temperature and humidity of torque transducers by using a natural and seasonal variation of ambient conditions at the laboratory. We had measured the sensitivities of the torque transducers over almost one year using the KRISS 2 kN m torque standard machine. The sensitivity data acquired at various ambient conditions were processed using our measurement model to extract the sensitivity coefficients of temperature and humidity simultaneously with high precision. A comparison with a previous method using an environmental control chamber was carried out to test the feasibility of using our new method. Two results agreed within the uncertainty. We revealed that the torque measuring errors could be 8 times higher than the measurement and calibration capability of KRISS torque standard machine if the sensitivity changes due to the temperature and humidity are not properly corrected during a calibration.

Calibration of the spring constants of atomic force microscopy (AFM) cantilevers is one of the issues in biomechanics and nanomechanics for quantified force metrology at pico- or nano Newton level. In this paper, we present an AFM cantilever calibration system: the Nano Force Calibrator (NFC), which consists of a precision balance and a one-dimensional stage. Three types of AFM cantilevers (contact and tapping mode) with different shapes (beam and V) and spring constants (42, 1,0.06 N m') are investigated using the NFC. The calibration results show that the NFC can calibrate the micro cantilevers ranging from 0.01 - 100 N rn" with relative uncertainties ofless than 2%.

In this paper we present a new real-time visual servoing unit for laparoscopic surgery. This unit can automatically control laparoscope manipulator through visual tracking of laparoscopic surgical tool. For the tracking, we present two-stage adaptive CONDENSATION(conditional density propagation) algorithm to extract the accurate position of the surgical tool tip from a surgical image sequence in real-time. This algorithm can be adaptable to abrupt change of laparoscope illumination. For the control, we present virtual damper system to control a laparoscope manipulator safely and stably. This system causes the laparoscope to move under constraint of the virtual dampers which are linked to the four sides of image. The visual servoing unit operates the manipulator in real-time with locating the surgical tool in the center of image. The experimental results show that the proposed visual tracking algorithm is highly robust and the controlled manipulator can present stable view with safe.