Silk screen drying tunnel furnace is a kind of equipment widely used in industrial production. Silk screen printing, that is, screen printing, is a printing technology that transfers ink or other materials to the substrate through a screen printing plate. The drying tunnel furnace is a device used for drying printed products.

I. Structural composition of silk screen drying tunnel furnace
The silk screen drying tunnel furnace is usually composed of the following parts:

• Heating system: Generally, electric heating, gas heating or infrared heating and other methods are adopted to provide a heat source for the tunnel furnace to achieve rapid drying of printed matter. For example, in the process method for sintering semiconductor elements mentioned in some documents, infrared radiant tubes are used to heat semiconductor elements to complete processes such as drying, presintering and sintering in sequence.2

• Conveying system: Common conveying systems include chain conveyor, mesh belt conveyor, etc. Its role is to smoothly convey the printed matter to be dried through the tunnel furnace to ensure that each part can be heated and dried evenly. For example, in the research of the fully automatic double-sided silk screen printing and drying integrated machine, the conveying system is involved to improve its efficiency and performance in silk screen printing and drying.1

• Ventilation system: A good ventilation system can timely discharge the moisture and exhaust gas in the tunnel furnace and maintain the circulation of air in the furnace to improve the drying effect. In the environmentally-friendly denitration catalyst tunnel furnace type drying device, circulating fans and circulating air ducts are set up to improve the ventilation condition in the furnace.9

II. Working principle of silk screen drying tunnel furnace
The working principle of the silk screen drying tunnel furnace is mainly to use the heat generated by the heating system to heat and dry the silk screen products entering the tunnel furnace through the conveying system. In this process, the ventilation system continuously discharges moisture and exhaust gas to ensure the drying effect.
Taking the drying after silk screen printing of mobile phone glass as an example, the original chain plate through-type equipment was used for drying, which was inefficient and could not be connected to the silk screen equipment to form a production line. The current vertical high-efficiency mobile phone glass silk screen printing oven focuses on solving the equipment safety and oven uniformity problems and improving the drying efficiency.5

III. Application fields of silk screen drying tunnel furnace
Silk screen drying tunnel furnaces are widely used in multiple fields:

• Electronic industry: It plays an important role in mobile phone glass silk screen printing, semiconductor element sintering and other aspects. For example, in the semiconductor element sintering process, semiconductor elements are placed on the conveying silk screen and heated by infrared radiant tubes in the sintering furnace to complete processes such as drying, presintering and sintering.2

• Clothing industry: In the drying and processing of clothing silk screen oil grinding in clothing factories, after the energy-saving and automatic control technology transformation of tunnel electric heating furnaces, product quality and production efficiency can be improved and energy consumption can be reduced.4

• Solar cell industry: The fully automatic special silk screen printing machine for solar cells is composed of an imaging system fully automatic silk screen printing machine and a near-infrared drying equipment. It can not only print the electrodes at the core part of solar cells, but also has the functions and characteristics of fast drying after printing and greatly improving production capacity.

IV. Technical development trends of silk screen drying tunnel furnace
With the continuous progress of science and technology, the technology of silk screen drying tunnel furnaces is also constantly developing:

• Energy saving and high efficiency: One of the main goals of modern enterprise equipment renewal and transformation is energy saving and improving production efficiency. For example, in the energy-saving transformation of tunnel electric heating furnaces, transformations are carried out for problems such as quality, energy consumption, production efficiency and manual control to achieve energy saving and automatic control.4

• Increased degree of automation: The emergence of fully automatic silk screen printing machines, such as a fully automatic silk screen printing machine disclosed by Shenzhen Liangbida Technology Co., Ltd., including a main box frame, a feeding motor base, a worktable plate, a silk screen printing net bracket, an up and down moving plate, a transverse bracket, a ball screw with a servo motor, a channel-type drying oven and a belt conveyor rotating mechanism component, etc., improves the degree of automation of silk screen printing and drying.10

• Multi-functionalization: The silk screen drying tunnel furnace can not only be used for drying a single material, but also can be applied to the production of more materials through technical improvements to make the fully automatic double-sided silk screen printing and drying integrated machine more excellent and versatile. At the same time, in applications in different fields, functions can also be expanded according to actual needs. For example, in the tunnel inspection of infrastructure maintenance vehicles, a lane detection and motion-blur compensation system developed by combining art disciplines (silk screen printing) and camera elements improves the accuracy of the tunnel self-positioning method.7

In conclusion, silk screen drying tunnel furnaces have important research value and broad application prospects in terms of structural composition, working principle, application fields and technical development trends.Silk screen printing drying line. Silk screen printing drying and curing furnace. Silk screen printing baking line. Silk screen printing oven. Ink printing tunnel furnace.