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Circuits Everywhere
cpk0 writes "ABCNews is reporting on a small, New York based company that is now using and creating a technique of printing circuits directly onto paper with conductive inks. The uses up to this point are somewhat trivial, but the idea is undeniably exciting, and the article outlines some of the future ideas T-Ink Inc. has for this technology." Including electronic candy, oddly enough. Update: 10/27 17:24 GMT by T : Associated Press Technology Editor Frank Bajak points out that this story comes from The Associated Press, which deserves the credit.
shut up, you lying sack of shit. Printer toner is pulverized plastic. Dispersants for toner particles must be nonconductive, to avoid discharging the latent electrostatic image.
I would be more than willing to sign up for that...but...
Already tattoos I have from less than ten years ago are fading, and not evenly. So I would wonder how the longevity would be. Discounting the digital ID part, I would want a "mediatronic" tattoo only if i knew it was going to fade/degrade at a constant rate.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
A few years back, didn't the same company promise us paper cell phone and laptops that were disposable and going to come in happy meals? Or was that someone else?
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
It's called a "printed circuit board" because it was originally made by printing the metal on a substrate. The process of etching the copper clad boards was a later innovation, but the name stuck.
Jason
ProfQuotes
Yeah, I think your right. I remember something about that.
I remember these babies from a few years back. Here is another.
This ink has nothing in common with the one used to repair TV remotes.
On my linux box, both mozilla and konqueror hang while opening the article http://abcnews.go.com/wire/US/ap20031026_712.html.
Does the article open in windows IE?
Whilst everyone is all like 'omg I had a conductive pen when i was in grade school', we should probably point out that, this is not the same thing. Your conductive ink pen from radio shack, or your lead pencil, whilst worked great for your 'my 1st polarity tester' circuit are not fantastic materials for modern circuits.
;)
The old etching process that is common place now for PCB fabrication has to be totally monitored, controlled and QA'ed to death to achieve the results required by modern PCB designs.
Paper PCBs aren't really hot news anymore, the ink and company have been pedaling this idea for a whiles now. But you have to see the good sides, for one thing no matter how clean a PCB shop is, they make a hell of alot of bad chemicals worse during the process. If the acid baths, solder lines and the hell on earth glue they use get obsoleted it won't be soon enough.
That all said, and rather off topic, I think we are seeing less and less PCB design happening these days. FPGAs have come of age and now offer gate counts high enough to make them useful for more than a just bunch of glue logic in a single package. Look out for new PCBs where all the complex and exciting stuff is packed away in a single little chip with only a half dozen supporting components and headphone socket attached to that paper PCB
In Australia, McDonald's produced Finding Nemo themed Happy Meal boxes which came with a toy plastic fish. When the fish was placed on some bubbles on the top of the box and the user touched the bubbles on the side (which connected to the top ones), the fish made noises and/or lit up (I believe it depended which character you got). This used T-ink - AFAIK it's the first time it's been used in Australia. Has anyone else seen it being used for similar purposes?
Interesting timing, as King Arthur, a new boardgame using conductive ink just premiered at the big Essen game fest in Germany. This should count as a useful application.