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Xerox Claims Printable Electronics Breakthrough
adeelarshad82 writes "Xerox announced a new silver ink that it's calling a breakthrough in printable electronics, a leading-edge concept that's generated a lot of discussion but few actual products to date. Why? Precisely because of the issues that Xerox claims to have addressed. In concept, printable electronics is just what it sounds like: using a printer, basically an inkjet, to print electronic circuits. If this can be done reliably, electronic devices can be printed for far less than current methods cost. One can also print the devices on a variety of new materials. The possibilities range from printing on flexible plastic, to paper and cardboard, to fabric."
So, how long till people start downloading designs to print them out at home?
I can replace my racks with a three-ring binder!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I think it would be great if we can attach an electronic version of a printed document so that we can verify its authenticity using digital signatures.
Until the end of the 20th century, a major market for silver was photography. The digital camera and the inkjet printer have slowly destroyed that market and replaced it with digital imaging. Now there's a new use for the silver which, presumably, had digital imaging not come along would have been much more expensive. (Although color photography ends up more or less silver free and there was considerable recycling, there was still a steady consumption of silver, and as the photography market democratised, the amount of silver in use at a given time was steadily increasing.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
When I saw the sentence starting "The possibilities..." I mentally filled it in with "are endless".
I was surprised (and a little gratified) to see the summary actually enumerating some of the possibilities instead of hyping it as is normally done. That's good!
I can't wait to have a working circuit printed on as a tattoo, with the components inserted as piercings. I'm thinkin' 2 stage amp.
Electronics are going to be even more of a pain ... to service.
I was under the assumption that with today's 7 layer PCBs and bewildering array of surface mount components (and not just the resisters, the ICs too) that the days of servicing electronics was long gone.
My Canon G7 died slightly over a year after purchase in that it simply wouldn't power up any more. The cost of servicing exceeded the value of the camera.
The bulk of servicing cost is labour, and when you're doing the labour, fixing stuff can still be cheaper. ;-)
Not just servicing, but hacking and such is going to be a lot more of a pain if the traces vaporize when you look at them sideways.
I'm not sure what this is marketed as, for prototyping? Fast prototypes would be nice. But the vast majority of electronics are mass produced stuff, where the physical cost of the PCB is a small portion of the overall circuitry, with components, labour, and R&D being the real cost. I can't see printing traces of silver being cheaper than the existing methods. Maybe I'm missing something.
Sent from my PDP-11
I'd love to prototype on something like this. But I doubt if the actual output off an inkjet would work beyond the first time I sneeze over it.
Honestly, in some sense I got into software rather than electronics because it was so hard to experiment with electronics freely. This could lower that barrier for hobbyists & more importantly, kids. It needn't last through the weekend, but if it works and you can see it work, it's enough.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
From the article:
Great, just what I want: Having my clothes turned into a spamming device.
There are certainly countless examples of how wearable electronics could be put to good use, but the first thing they think of is advertising. Very telling, I'd say.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
A couple of interesting links to (short) videos about the process there also. http://www.xerox.com/go/xrx/template/inv_rel_newsroom.jsp?ed_name=NR_2009Oct27_Xerox_Scientists_Develop_Silver_Ink&app=Newsroom&view=newsrelease&format=article&Xcntry=USA&Xlang=en_US
Any electronics device *can* be serviced or repaired. The issue is cost and difficulty of the repair itself. In many cases it is simply too difficult to replace a failed component or too costly. In your camera example, it could be a component buried deep inside the camera on a small PCB which is not easily accessible. It may take a technician an hour or more to disassemble the camera into a few hundred pieces to get access to the failed component. That is certainly a more expensive operation than replacement of the device.
As a result, many electronic devices made today are effectively disposable. The cost involved to fix them just isn't justified. As an EE, I do try to repair my own devices if they are out of warranty coverage, but sometimes the effort required is just not worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to replace in many cases.
Being able to print the circuit is all well and good, but presumably it's literally just the underlying circuit and components still need to be attached? I'm guessing you can't just print a resistor, a transistor, an IC chip or something?
If I'm correct in this assumption, presumably this technology doesn't really open any new doors in terms of what can be created, only makes the process for testing and eventually producing circuit designs cheaper and possibly quicker?
It's not multilayer PCBs and SMD that makes electronics uneconomical to repair, it's the purchase price of a new article that does it. In the past, if your television failed, you got it repaired - because in 1979, a colour TV cost (in 2009 money) over £1000. Having a technician charge you £150 in today's money was worth it.
But when a digital camera costs £150, it's not worth spending £150 to get someone to fix it.
Surface mount components aren't all that difficult to rework with practise. Today, many electronics hobbyists work with SMD, personally I've made my own boards with 0.4mm pitch (that's 0.2mm between the pins) LQFPs, and 0603 chip capacitors/resistors etc (about 1/10th of the size of a grain of rice). Many hobbyists are working with leadless QFNs, and some masochists are using 0201 components (2/1000in by 1/1000th in). (For me 0603 is fine, it's small enough to be able to put where I need them, yet large enough I can assemble a board without a magnifying glass).
Printable PCBs would be the holy grail for homebrew PCBs. We've got close - some people have modified printers to print etch resist directly onto copper clad board, which you can then etch. The rest of us typcially use iron-on toner transfer (shiny paper through a laser printer, then ironed onto copper board with a clothes iron) or UV photo exposure methods.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Hmmm, if Xerox gets its way with a monopoly razor-blade like business in printable solder, ink won't be cheap.
As a result, many electronic devices made today are effectively disposable. The cost involved to fix them just isn't justified. As an EE, I do try to repair my own devices if they are out of warranty coverage, but sometimes the effort required is just not worth it. It's far easier and cheaper to replace in many cases.
This i where our current (capatalist) system failes. (Not blaming capitalism per sé btw, but it has influenced our pricing and thinking). The reason repairs are not worth the trouble are basically because manufacturing does not take in account _all_ costs, both money-wise and 'virtual' - like environmental cost.
Any idea how much CO2 was used producing a digital camera? You'd be surprised. Or how much toxic waste was produced manufacturing those electronics? How much people died in mines (or have their life shortened) mining the minerals? Repairing to expensive: It's because you compare US/European wages to Chinese or Taiwanese wages. ''Disassemble to 100 components''-> that's obviously a case of bad design where maintenance/repair was not being taken into consideration.
The situation not only holds for electronics. Take cars for example, cars that are 'total loss' here in the west, because repairs outcost the value of a 2nd hand car.. This same car, once driven to Afrika (Marocco for example) can live another 10-15 years with ease. Simply because of the difference in price of labour vs materials. (Not that that is always best for environment...)
Repairs not being economically feasable is much more of a choice, than a necessaty. Guess the situation only will be turned once we either run out of resources either have to pay for all real cost including environmental and eliminating differences in hourly labor costs worldwide.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Electronics are going to be even more of a pain in the ass to service.
When integrated circuits were first invented, engineers scoffed. "How would you replace a part in one?" not realizing how cheap the "parts" would be. This is the same thing. TFA says, for example, that today an RFID chip costs a dollar, while this tech would reduce the cost to a penny.
You don't service them any more than you repair a burned out light bulb.
I can't see it being terribly reliable either.
If TVs were a dollar each I wouldn't care how unreliable they were. But TFA covers this too -- until this new tech you needed a clean room.
Free Martian Whores!
as water based ink and does not require sintering or secondary processing and works well on standard inkjet or copier paper:
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=29
http://www.methodedevelopment.com/whatsnew.aspx?newsitem=30
Commercial inkjet systems for printing electronics on a wide range of materials has also been available for some time: http://www.onelabs.com/prntelec0000.htm
Multilayer conductive pcb traces including passive and active components are already being inkjet printed. The current geometries however for components are in the few micron range. A couple of decades behind current semiconductor processing but far ahead of current pcb fabrication techniques.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur