Yasui Seiki Japan started the fabrication of their fourth and largest Coating Machine
Assembly Plant
as well as their new Headquarters building in Kanagawa, Japan. This assembly plant, with the
impressive 12,000 sq. ft. building, is large enough to build six production-scale coating
machines
at the same time. Chief Operating Officer, Taku Kusano, explains, “The expansion has been
overdue.
Our production schedule for large, production-scale coaters is booked until 2025, and orders
are
only increasing.” Yasui Seiki also doubled the number of design engineers in the past couple
of
years, but their lead-time is known to be very long. Mr. Kusano says, “We are doing
everything we
can to keep up with the current market demand without compromising the world renowned Yasui
Seiki
quality. We train design engineers for minimum three years until their design can be
approved as
Yasui Seiki design. Our focus remains the same: Quality over Quantity.“
The current headquarters in Ayase, Kanagawa, Japan was built back in 1980. “It can no longer
house
all of our new employees. We added designers, assembly engineers, new sales forces over the
past
couple of years, and it was time for us to move to the new location,” says Mr. Kusano. Yasui
Seiki
has doubled the size of their engineering team, including design, assembly, and sales
personnel.
They hired a new General Manager and plan to further increase staff throughout their other
functions. Both the new Assembly Plant and the new Headquarters will be operational
beginning in
September of this year.
Yasui Seiki, precision coating machine designer and manufacturer, launched a new demo room at
their
Bloomington, IN facility. The roughly 1000 sq. ft. demo room features five test and pilot
coating
machines. One of these, the μCoater 650TM, is the first of its model to be installed in the US.
Chief Operating Officer Taku Kusano says, “Yasui Seiki has been supporting the Japanese flexible
thin
film industry for over 40 years. It is my wish to contribute to the technology development in
the US
and offer easier access to our well-established Japanese coating technology in the US.”
The μCoater 650TM is the newest addition to Yasui Seiki’s packaged coaters. It has Yasui
Seiki’s
patented MICROGRAVURETM, slot die coating head, UV cure, dry laminator and 1.5m counterflow
dryer.
As always, Yasui Seiki’s test and pilot coaters are designed for their versatility.
MICROGRAVURETM
and slot die coating heads together cover a wide coating thickness range of 0.5μm to over 400μm
wet
coating. It handles aqueous, solvent and UV coatings very well, and the counterflow dryer is
carefully designed to offer balanced drying to protect the uniform coating surface in a short
oven.
A μCoater 650TM has been installed at the Southern University of Science and Technology in China
as
well as at the R&D facility of the biggest automobile manufacturer in Japan.
Director of Coating Operations at MIRWEC Coating, Takeshi Chakihara, says, μCoater 650 TM is a
handy
coater. I tried optical coating using MICROGRAVURE™, and battery electrode coating
using
slot die.
It has a minimum setup time and clean up is very easy.
Yasui Seiki CEO, Yoshinari Yasui, has a personal attachment to the beautiful college town of
Bloomington, IN. He says, I wish to bring in more business to this small town to contribute
to
the
prosperity of the local community.
The Test & Toll Coating Service Division at Yasui Seiki’s subsidiary, MIRWEC Film Inc, in
Bloomington, Indiana, has been experiencing unprecedented growth since the end of 2013 due to
rising
demands in manufacturing thin battery components. Yasui Seiki has installed five coating
machines
with its patented MICROGRAVURE™ coating method, as well as a variety of slot dies, at
MIRWEC.
Recently the company has been supporting customers in anode/cathode coating as well as battery
separator coatings. MICROGRAVURE™ can easily, quickly and evenly apply less than 3 microns
of
a variety of slurry and other coatings onto substrates with less than 2% variation. The web
thickness that has been successfully handled has been as thin as 8 microns.
Consumer demand is increasing so much that Yasui Seiki’s existing coating lines can no
longer
handle
all requests. The company has a plan in place to build a brand new 700mm-wide coating machine
exclusively for battery coating customers. The door to the new coating room is scheduled to open
in
early 2016. The MICROGRAVURE™ coating method has had a very solid client base in Japan for
over 30 years, and Yasui Seiki has been very excited to see the growth in the USA in recent
years.
Yasui Seiki Japan Develops Non-Silicone Release Film using Homopolymer
Polypropylene Film
June 5, 2015
Summary
Yasui Seiki Japan developed non-silicone laminated film. The film consists of three
layers:
a release layer (99.99% pure polypropylene), an adhesive layer, and PET. Eliminating all
additives
from the polypropylene to protect its purity is the key to easy release. The heat tolerance
has been
improved from the PP's normal 80 deg. C to 120 deg. C. The surface texture can be glossy or
mat.
Yasui Seiki is working closely with the customers to increase the effectiveness of the film
and is
getting ready to launch it on the market.
Yasui Seiki's subsidiary, Labo, Co., Ltd. handled the research and development. Yasui Seiki
will
purchase PP film for high voltage capacitors from the US subsidiary, MIRWEC Film. In
addition to the
main application as the non-silicone release film, the new film has a wide range of
possibilities.
It could replace PET use in wrapping, post-mold decoration, sandmat process, etc.
