1. The coating material and its behaviour
Start with a datasheet for the slurry or solution, not just its name. Viscosity at the temperature you actually coat at, solids content, solvent type, solids loading and shelf life all determine die design, pump sizing and oven length. Salt-based perovskite precursors, cathode slurries with conductive carbon and organic charge-transport inks behave very differently, and a machine specified without this data is a guess.
Bring samples. The fastest way to remove disagreement later is to coat your own formulation on your own substrate during an incoming-material inspection, then measure the dry thickness and appearance under agreed conditions.
2. Substrate: size, thickness, web or sheet
Confirm whether you are running roll-to-roll or individual sheets, and give the thickness range, width, surface energy and initial bow or curl. A thin flexible film needs a different web path, tension window and backing support than a rigid glass plate. Substrate flatness is the most under-reported cause of streaks and thickness variation, because the die-to-substrate gap tolerates far less deviation than most buyers expect.
3. Coating window: width, thickness and speed
State the target dry-film thickness and the width you need, plus the line speed you are aiming at. Our slit coating equipment is specified for a 5–200 µm coating thickness and a line speed set between 1 and 10 m/min, with an adjustable deviation-correcting device. If your process needs values outside that envelope, tell us before the layout is drawn, because it changes the die, the pump and the oven.
Write down the tolerance as well as the target. “80 µm, ±5 µm across the width” is an engineering requirement; “about 80 µm” is not, and the acceptance test cannot be built from it.
4. Drying and atmosphere requirements
Coating is only half the process; the oven decides whether the film is usable. Supply the solvent boiling point, the temperature the substrate can tolerate, and whether oxygen or moisture must be excluded. Our standard machine is electrically heated, with the oven length set per layout, and the same platform can be integrated with a glove box spin coating equipment arrangement for R&D work on moisture-sensitive perovskite and OLED materials.
If you need an inert atmosphere, say so early. Nitrogen or argon supply, leak rate and gas consumption affect the enclosure design and the utility connections on your side.
5. Substrate handling and web tension
Describe how the material arrives and leaves the coater. The standard configuration uses a 3-inch inflatable shaft for the unwinder, with winding options available. Roll weight, core size, splice policy and whether the web can be stopped under tension all need agreement, particularly for thin films that crease or stretch.
6. Factory constraints and utilities
Send a floor sketch with door widths, ceiling height, floor loading and the position of existing utilities. The machine outline given for the current model is 2540 mm × 800 mm × 1650 mm before the oven is added, and a long oven can turn a simple delivery into a disassembly job, so measure the route from the truck to the foundation. Also confirm available voltage, total permitted power, compressed-air quality, and extraction for solvent vapour. Solvent handling and ventilation duties are yours to define against local regulations; a machine supplier cannot infer them for you.
7. Rate, yield and acceptance testing
Give the throughput you must hit and the pass rate you will hold the line to. Published figures for our current machine include a product pass rate of 99.5% or higher and an equipment pressure rating of 6 kg/cm; treat supplier figures as a starting point and restate them as your own acceptance requirement in the contract. Agree the acceptance protocol before the order: number of consecutive rolls or sheets, measurement positions across the width, sampling interval, and the instrument used for thickness. An unsigned acceptance protocol is the single most common source of dispute at commissioning.
8. Service life: spare parts, documentation and support
Decide up front which consumables you will stock — dies, seals, filters, wiper blades, heater elements — and in which language you want the manual and the electrical drawings. If a fault occurs at two in the morning, a three-colour warning light tells you there is a problem but not what to do next, so a fault list mapped to remedies is worth specifying in the contract.
If the coater has to match existing handling equipment or fit inside a line you already run, share the upstream and downstream interface requirements early — unwind direction, load height, web width, transfer speed, control signals — so the machine is adapted to your line rather than the other way round. Our engineering services team handles this kind of non-standard automation equipment work alongside standard machine builds, which is usually where interface assumptions cause the most delay.
What a good enquiry looks like
One page that answers: material and viscosity, substrate type and dimensions, target thickness and tolerance, required width and speed, drying temperature and atmosphere, throughput, and the space and utilities available on site. With those items, our engineering team can propose a configuration, an oven length and a realistic lead time in the first round instead of the third. Send your requirements to sales@powerde.net or call +86 13023198376, and we will review them with you before anything is quoted.
