Metal working – Method of mechanical manufacture – Electrical device making
Reexamination Certificate
2001-01-05
2003-12-23
Vo, Peter (Department: 3729)
Metal working
Method of mechanical manufacture
Electrical device making
C029S600000, C029S601000, C029S03300H, C029S748000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06665931
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to a wiring method and a wiring apparatus, and more particularly, to a wiring method and a wiring apparatus capable of easily forming a coil on an insulating substrate and easily laying a wire conductor on a circuit board or circuit substrate. The present invention also relates to an IC card manufacturing method capable of easily manufacturing an IC card provided with a chip module and/or an antenna coil, using the wiring method and/or wiring apparatus of the above kind.
BACKGROUND ART
Recently, the demand to reduce the heights of various components installed in an electric apparatus has been increasing. To meet such a demand, a coil serving as a transformer, a filter or the like may be configured in the form of a so-called “planar coil”. The planar coil of this type is conventionally manufactured by subjecting a conductive plate or film to etching or mechanical punching or by winding an enameled wire two-dimensionally. However, there are many problems that hinder manufacturing a planar coil of desired properties at low cost and with high yield.
For example, according to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Preliminary Publication No. 57-136393, a wire conductor is laid in a desired pattern on an insulating substrate by moving a wiring head along the insulating substrate, wherein the wire conductor heated in advance using ultrasonic vibration is drawn out from the wiring head and embedded in an adhesive layer provided on a surface of the insulating substrate. This technique, however, needs an expensive ultrasonic vibration machine for heating the wire conductor just before it is laid on the substrate. This makes a wiring apparatus complicated in construction and high in cost. Further, controlling the wire temperature is very difficult. If the wire temperature varies, a uniform adhesion of the wire conductor to the adhesive layer cannot be attained, causing an incorrect conductor pattern.
According to the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Preliminary Publication No. 8-294213, a patterned wire conductor placed on an insulating sheet is heated and pressed by a plate-shaped heating unit, to be embedded in the insulating sheet. This technique helps manufacture the planar coil relatively easily, but needs a heating unit large enough to cover the entirety of the patterned wire conductor. Further, even with such a large heating unit, it is difficult to heat the entirety of the patterned wire conductor uniformly at a time. If the patterned wire conductor is not heated uniformly, the wire conductor cannot be uniformly embedded in the insulating sheet, and, for example, part of the wire conductor rises from the insulating sheet. This may cause deformation and/or breakage of the patterned wire conductor.
Recently, an IC card having an information-processing function has come into widespread use. Particularly, an IC card accommodating therein an antenna coil for wireless communication with an external information processing apparatus is attracting attention. An antenna coil of the IC card of this type is formed on a card substrate and covered with a protective layers. Generally, the antenna coil is formed by etching a copper-foiled card substrate. However, this method requires a complicated process for making an antenna coil, and makes it difficult to form an antenna coil composed of coil parts or coil sections arranged at a sufficiently high density, because adjacent coil parts can be short-circuited if the spacing therebetween is small. The coil parts each have a circular or rectangular shape and arranged as a whole in a spiral form to constitute the antenna coil. Thus, the antenna coil formed by etching is not satisfactory in respect of antenna characteristics and manufacturing cost.
Alternatively, an antenna coil may be formed by plating or printing. With these techniques, however, it is generally difficult to provide an antenna coil with a thick conductor, posing problems in respect of the bending strength and tensile strength of the antenna coil, as well as the strength and reliability of the antenna coil mounted to an IC card.
As for the production of an antenna coil, it is known to soften a card substrate by hot air and embed a wire conductor into a surface portion of the softened card substrate, or to heat a wire conductor in advance with frictional heat generated by ultrasonic vibration and embed the heated wire conductor into a surface portion of a card substrate. However, these methods require severe control of hot air temperature and conductor heating temperature, respectively. When ultrasonic vibration is used, an expensive ultrasonic vibrator is required, which causes an increased equipment cost and fatigue breakage of a wire conductor attributable to ultrasonic vibration.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide a wiring method and a wiring apparatus capable of laying a wire conductor easily and precisely in the process of manufacturing a planar transformer, a circuit board, or the like.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an IC card manufacturing method capable of manufacturing an IC card provided with a chip module or an antenna coil, with ease and high reliability and at low cost, using the wiring method and wiring apparatus mentioned above.
In order to attain the above object, according to one aspect of the present invention, there is provided a wiring method comprising the steps of (a) forming an adhesive layer on a surface of a substrate, and (b) sticking a wire conductor on the surface of the substrate by causing a three-dimensional relative movement between the substrate and a wiring head adapted to guide the wire conductor such that the wiring head relatively moves along the adhesive layer formed on the surface of the substrate and the wiring head and the adhesive layer intermittently come close to each other for point contact.
In the wiring method of this invention, during the three-dimensional relative movement between the wiring head and the substrate, the wiring head intermittently comes close to the adhesive layer formed on the surface of the substrate for point contact therewith, so that the wire conductor supplied to and guided by the wiring head may be pressed between the wiring head and the adhesive layer formed on the substrate surface, to be stuck at a point on the substrate surface. Thus, the wire conductor is stuck on the substrate surface, point by point (point to point), securely and uniformly, like a thread fastened stitch by stitch by a sewing machine. The wire conductor is easily laid with high sticking strength and with uniformity only by relatively moving the wiring head and the substrate in three dimensions, so that the possibility of the wire conductor being deformed or broken after it is laid on the substrate may be reduced. As the adhesive layer, an adhesive layer having adhesiveness in an ordinary temperature or a pressure sensitive adhesive layer exhibiting adhesiveness when a pressure is applied by the wiring head is desirable. In the present invention, the wire conductor does not need to be heated before it is laid, making it possible to avoid increased cost due to the provision of heating means, severe control of heating temperature for the wire conductor, and unevenness in sticking the wire conductor on the substrate caused by unsuitable control of heating temperature. Further, the wiring method of this invention has little restriction about the kind of wire conductor and the pattern of relative movement between the wiring head and the substrate, which pattern closely relates to the wiring pattern. Therefore, a desired wire conductor can be laid in a desired wiring pattern, thereby making it possible to manufacture a planar transformer of desired properties, for instance.
Desirably, the three-dimensional relative movement between the wiring head and the substrate executed in the step (b) includes a relative translational motion between the wiring head and the substrate which is performed along the adhesive layer, and a relative
Arahori Masaaki
Nishiwaki Toshimitsu
Yamaguchi Shigeo
Yamamoto Toshio
Knobbe Martens Olson & Bear LLP
The Furukawa Electric Co. Ltd.
Trinh Minh
Vo Peter
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