Engineers from the Moscow Aviation Institute have developed an inexpensive installation for creating printed circuit boards, which has already been called an “office printer” in the world of photolithography. The project is aimed at small laboratories, pilot production, and educational purposes.
Traditional photolithography requires the creation of special photomasks – films that are placed on the blank. This approach does not allow for quick changes to the design, and the mask material deforms over time, leading to alignment errors. The MAI development uses a direct exposure method: the conductor pattern is formed on the blank with a laser without intermediate carriers. Industrial analogues of such installations cost more than 10 million rubles, while the new design based on a liquid crystal matrix will cost 300–500 thousand rubles.
The key feature of the development is the built-in digital correction system for the blank's position. The software compensates for micro-deformations of the material in real time, ensuring accuracy sufficient for most research and development tasks. The installation uses available components from Russia and friendly countries, which allowed reducing the cost of equipment by 20–30 times compared to industrial counterparts.
