David Savastano, Editor05.11.11
Printed electronics manufacturers seem to break down into two groups: multinational companies and entrepreneurs. For every BASF and DuPont, there are small start-ups led by innovators with an idea.
Blue Sparq, Inc., a Cape Coral, FL-based engineering design and manufacturing company specializing in capacitive, touch sensitive technology, fits into the entrepreneurial category. Jameel Ahed, Blue Sparq’s president, started his first tech company in the basement of his father's dental office back in 2002. Ahed sold this company and decided to move to a nice warm tropical place, settling in Florida, but soon became bored and began looking for a new challenge.
“All that fun in the sun was fantastic,” Ahed said. “But after three months, I found myself getting bored, and wanted to get back to what I love, and that is product development.
“But this time, things were going to be a little different,” he added. “I decided to build a new company that focused on helping other companies develop their products.”
Ahed formed his new company, Blue Sparq, Inc., in 2008, utilizing his background in bio-medical engineering specializing in electrical and mechanical engineering to develop capacitive touch interfaces.
“Blue Sparq, Inc. serves the medical, aerospace, industrial and consumer markets,” Ahed said. “We can help anybody trying to make a product.”
Blue Sparq understands that several aspects of the graphic overlay such as inks and materials used, significantly impact the overall performance of the touch interface. By designing the graphic overlay and the electronics together, Blue Sparq ensures a successful capacitive touch system. Blue Sparq’s patent pending Fore Light™ technology, expertise in designing tactile feedback systems and ‘state-of-the-art’ graphic printing capabilities help provide a futuristic look and feel to its capacitive touch interface, thus giving the client an edge over their competition.
“The first several clients of Blue Sparq, Inc. all had something in common,” Ahed continued. “They all asked us to build their products with capacitive touch interfaces. They all recognized how much Apple had changed the way people expect to interact with electronics.”
Speed is of the essence in the marketplace, and Blue Sparq, Inc. developed a unique digital printing approach tailored to quickly produce high-quality systems in a matter of hours instead of months.
“Since we are a high speed development shop, in some cases we have built ‘looks like, feels like’ prototypes in less than six weeks, worthy of being shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,” Ahed said. “We needed a way to make these touch interfaces quickly. The vendors that we were using to have graphic overlays and circuit layers printed would give us lead times between four to seven weeks. This was totally unacceptable and would destroy our high-speed turnaround time.
“We decided to purchase some brand-new equipment and even help develop some new ‘printed electronics’ technologies that helped us do things much faster,” Ahed added. “What takes some companies four to seven weeks to do, we can do it in a matter of hours. This new service became a division of Blue Sparq, Inc. called Rapid Keypads or www.RapidKeypads.com. We are the experts in designing and manufacturing capacitive touch interfaces.”
By utilizing digital printing, Blue Sparq, Inc. can design and create hi-tech prototype keypads in a matter of hours. Once approved, Blue Sparq can then manufacture the production quantities required.
“In order to make a high speed prototype of a capacitive touch interface, we start by digitally printing the graphic,” Ahed said. “In most cases we reverse print the graphic to a piece of acrylic. This gives an impressive look to your product. Most people say it gives a third dimension or depth to the graphic because you look through the acrylic to see the graphic.
“The next thing we do is digitally print our conductive circuit layer,” he continued. “Finally we connect this to our capacitive touch driver electronics. Using our special tools we can tune and map the new keypads within minutes. Because we can do this so quickly and efficiently, we can accept jobs that only have a total production requirement of 15 parts. We can do these small runs at a price that our customers can still afford.”
Ahed said Blue Sparq, Inc.’s capability has drawn much attention from original equipment manufacturers and product designers.
“Ever since we launched www.RapidKeypads.com, we have been extremely busy,” Ahed said. “Some IC manufacturers have said that in the last couple of years, 3.5 billion mechanical switches have been converted over to capacitive touch. It has been pretty obvious by the number of calls we get every single day asking for help with designing a new capacitive touch keypad for their new product. Most companies end up giving me, my own sales pitch. They say that the futuristic look and feel will give them an edge over their competition. They want to be the first one to have this type of touch interface.”
Ahed sees big potential for printed electronics in the future as new applications are developed.
“I think this use of printed electronics is just the start of big things to come,” Ahed concluded. “We are very interested in printed battery technologies as well as printed displays. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you flip through the latest edition of Popular Mechanics and see a digital video advertisement? I think it is very possible to have a small battery card and a small display running a disposable ad in a magazine. One day you may even have a bag of Doritos talk to you as you walk by it in the grocery store!”
“All that fun in the sun was fantastic,” Ahed said. “But after three months, I found myself getting bored, and wanted to get back to what I love, and that is product development.
“But this time, things were going to be a little different,” he added. “I decided to build a new company that focused on helping other companies develop their products.”
“Blue Sparq, Inc. serves the medical, aerospace, industrial and consumer markets,” Ahed said. “We can help anybody trying to make a product.”
Blue Sparq understands that several aspects of the graphic overlay such as inks and materials used, significantly impact the overall performance of the touch interface. By designing the graphic overlay and the electronics together, Blue Sparq ensures a successful capacitive touch system. Blue Sparq’s patent pending Fore Light™ technology, expertise in designing tactile feedback systems and ‘state-of-the-art’ graphic printing capabilities help provide a futuristic look and feel to its capacitive touch interface, thus giving the client an edge over their competition.
“The first several clients of Blue Sparq, Inc. all had something in common,” Ahed continued. “They all asked us to build their products with capacitive touch interfaces. They all recognized how much Apple had changed the way people expect to interact with electronics.”
“Since we are a high speed development shop, in some cases we have built ‘looks like, feels like’ prototypes in less than six weeks, worthy of being shown at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas,” Ahed said. “We needed a way to make these touch interfaces quickly. The vendors that we were using to have graphic overlays and circuit layers printed would give us lead times between four to seven weeks. This was totally unacceptable and would destroy our high-speed turnaround time.
“We decided to purchase some brand-new equipment and even help develop some new ‘printed electronics’ technologies that helped us do things much faster,” Ahed added. “What takes some companies four to seven weeks to do, we can do it in a matter of hours. This new service became a division of Blue Sparq, Inc. called Rapid Keypads or www.RapidKeypads.com. We are the experts in designing and manufacturing capacitive touch interfaces.”
By utilizing digital printing, Blue Sparq, Inc. can design and create hi-tech prototype keypads in a matter of hours. Once approved, Blue Sparq can then manufacture the production quantities required.
“The next thing we do is digitally print our conductive circuit layer,” he continued. “Finally we connect this to our capacitive touch driver electronics. Using our special tools we can tune and map the new keypads within minutes. Because we can do this so quickly and efficiently, we can accept jobs that only have a total production requirement of 15 parts. We can do these small runs at a price that our customers can still afford.”
Ahed said Blue Sparq, Inc.’s capability has drawn much attention from original equipment manufacturers and product designers.
“Ever since we launched www.RapidKeypads.com, we have been extremely busy,” Ahed said. “Some IC manufacturers have said that in the last couple of years, 3.5 billion mechanical switches have been converted over to capacitive touch. It has been pretty obvious by the number of calls we get every single day asking for help with designing a new capacitive touch keypad for their new product. Most companies end up giving me, my own sales pitch. They say that the futuristic look and feel will give them an edge over their competition. They want to be the first one to have this type of touch interface.”
Ahed sees big potential for printed electronics in the future as new applications are developed.
“I think this use of printed electronics is just the start of big things to come,” Ahed concluded. “We are very interested in printed battery technologies as well as printed displays. Wouldn't it be fantastic if you flip through the latest edition of Popular Mechanics and see a digital video advertisement? I think it is very possible to have a small battery card and a small display running a disposable ad in a magazine. One day you may even have a bag of Doritos talk to you as you walk by it in the grocery store!”