Retrofitting and repurposing of a 15-year-old roll to roll coater

The GP Plasma team resurrected and reconditioned a 15-year-old roll-to-roll coater to deposit state of the art coatings for the photovoltaic solar industry. It involved a complete system teardown, design and rebuild of magnetrons inhouse, new pump system, updated automation and web interface, electrical and PLC, operating code and so on. We even designed and built a new metal foil web handling system.

  • 15-year-old machine resurrected and re-automated.

  • repurposed toward depositing state-of-art PV coatings

  • complete system teardown

  • re-design (optimized) inhouse rebuild of the magnetron sources

  • completely new pump system

  • updated automation hardware, code and functional operation

  • new HMI and network interface

  • electrical and PLC all newly specified, designed and integrated

  • new metal foil web handling system

Ken completing the upgrade of the turbo pump system

Troy vom Braucke