Focusing on digital spray printing technology for functional coatings in industrial scenarios, "Shifang Technology" secures tens of millions in a new round of financing | Exclusive from 36Kr

Text | Lin Qingqing

Editor | Yuan Silai

36Kr learned that "Shifang Technology", a provider of digital printing system solutions for industrial functional coatings, has completed a new round of financing. The investor is Yijun Capital, and the old shareholders have over - subscribed. Previously, "Shifang Technology" had completed over 100 million yuan in Series A and Series A+ financing, with Xinghan Capital serving as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be mainly used for product R & D, market expansion, and capital replenishment.

Founded in 2020, "Shifang Technology" is committed to creating system - level solutions for key areas of intelligent manufacturing. Through digital printing technology, it provides overall solutions for large - dose, high - precision, high - reliability, and micron - level functional coating printing in industrial fields such as new energy, PCB, and automotive.

"Shifang Technology" has certain technological advantages in key areas such as software algorithms, ink supply system control, board design, and fluid mechanics modeling. Based on this, the company independently developed the industrial printing hardware Box, which integrates the print head, board, and ink path control. It can meet the large - dose, high - cycle, and high - precision requirements of industrial coating printing and provide technical support for the industrial printing field.

Meanwhile, "Shifang Technology" uses a unique ink droplet observation technology and its independently developed Tetris™ industrial printing software to achieve precise control of ink droplet size and landing point during mass production and complete micron - level printing.

36Kr learned that industrial functional coatings are a key process in the field of intelligent manufacturing, with a market scale of over 100 billion. It is currently in a critical period of rapid development. Especially in key areas such as new energy, automotive, semiconductors, and panels, industrial - grade digital printing technology has shown broad application prospects in the functional coating process.

The founding team of "Shifang Technology" told 36Kr that taking the battery cell insulation coating as an example, the traditional blue film process has many problems, such as low yield, poor insulation and voltage resistance performance, poor weather resistance, and high material costs. To solve these problems, the team began to explore the use of UV inkjet printing technology to replace the traditional blue film process and launched a single - machine system for battery cell insulation coating printing.

Combined with special inks, this system can achieve large - dose (single - point ink droplets exceeding 180pL), high - thickness (100um per pass printing), and high - speed (400mm/s running speed, capable of side - spraying) coating printing. Through the deep coupling of software, hardware, and AI, it can achieve inkjet printing that combines high - speed large - area printing and high - precision edge printing. Taking a 314Ah battery as an example, the single - machine printing speed can reach 60ppm.

This system solves the problems of efficiency, shear force, and thickness consistency, and improves the safety, durability, and performance stability of the battery. In addition to performance improvement, its comprehensive cost is also more than 40% lower than that of the blue film process.

Currently, the UV inkjet printing technology of "Shifang Technology" has been fully verified in global leading battery manufacturers in cooperation with leading line integrators and has achieved the world's first mass - production delivery.

The founding team of "Shifang Technology" told 36Kr, "Industrial coating digital printing is a platform - type technology. The team will continue to build core capabilities around software algorithms, hardware, and consumables. Starting from the battery cell insulation coating, this technology will be extended to a large number of basic industrial coating links in industries such as solid - state batteries, PCB, automotive, and panels in the future."

In terms of the team, the R & D team of the company accounts for more than 80%. It is led by high - level talents from top universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Xi'an Jiaotong University, and Harbin Institute of Technology. More than 35% of the team members have master's or doctoral degrees, covering interdisciplinary backgrounds in mathematics, physics, materials, optics, artificial intelligence, etc. The core members have many years of management and R & D experience in large - scale technology companies.