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About LinkBacksRead more.Researchers design fast, cheap technique to print circuits using $300 worth of equipment.
Read more.Researchers design fast, cheap technique to print circuits using $300 worth of equipment.
I'm actually more interested in this kind of thing than I've ever been with 3D printing. If only this kind of thing existed back when I was at school learning simple electronics.
Although that being said, I did like pratting about with the soldering irons.
The use of silver seems like it would be awful expensive though. Are there any other conductive inks that could be used in this manner?
I don't see why inks containing copper or tin nano-particles instead of silver couldn't work just as well. In fact Sn has been done and it has certain advantages mainly lower melting point. http://phys.org/news/2011-04-ink-tin...e-circuit.htmlOriginally Posted by tealsuki
Many moons ago I used to work in the satellite industry and one of the jobs we occasionally did in the materials lab was to produce prototype PCBs using a photo resist and acid etching method on a copper plated substrate. This shows how it's done although we used different kit and a fluorescent booth http://kmlabo.com/e/
The beauty about this new invention is it can be used on just about any substrate using cheap kit in very little time.
"Reality is what it is, not what you want it to be." Frank Zappa. ----------- "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." Huang Po.----------- "A drowsy line of wasted time bathes my open mind", - Ride.
I've been doing this for years. All you need are a blank copper PCB, an iron-on tshirt transfer paper, and a laserjet printer. You design your PCB circuit on your PC, then you print it out on the tshirt transfer using laserjet toner, then you iron on said tshirt transfer onto the PCB, then you submerge the PCB in brick-cleaning acid (hydrochloric acid), and boom, you've printed your own circuit board for less than $10.
Probably much more convenient safer if they skip the acid etching stage,
and it does say printed "in under a minute".
Conductive ink pens have been around for years - but they're sold as PCB trace repair pens,
recently they seem to be being re-marketed as paper prototyping pens:
http://www.bareconductive.com/bare-paint-pen
Last edited by mikerr; 12-11-2013 at 10:44 PM.
Currently studying elec/mech combined engineering, using programs like Multisim by National Instruments, I could see this being a very easily implemented feature for software like that.
I wouldn't trust some of the people on my course with a soldering iron, so avoiding acid etch would be a bonus
This is over my head a bit, but a fairly obvious point occurs to me...
... you probably don't want to use one of those printers that have fixed print heads (e.g. most HP models) and instead this is probably best suited to the ones that have print head and ink storage integrated (Epson?)
Of course, if this takes off, there's maybe some mileage for the printer manufacturers to start offering official versions of these refilled print cartridges.
Career status: still enjoying my new career in DevOps, but it's keeping me busy...
Looking at the current cost of printer ink (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006...ts-printer-ink), imagine how much silver nano particle ink will cost!
Should be able to use a 3D printer to produce a printed circuit board with the right materials!!!
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