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3D Printer Lays Down Functioning Circuitry Alongside Thermoplastic
Lucas123 writes: "The Rabbit Proto is a new 3D printer attachment that can be added to a RepRap printer to create circuitry right alongside an existing thermoplastic extruder. While still in prototype, the printer head is expected to ship this summer. The creators of the Rabbit Proto, a group of Standford graduate students, have already printed working prototypes, such as a game controller. So far, the syringe-like printer head has used silver-filled silicon to create circuitry, but the engineers are now working with conductive inks made with graphite. The Rabbit Proto head unit can be pre-ordered for $350, or you can purchase a fully-assembled RepRap 3D printer with the Rabbit Proto head for $2,499."
"the syringe-like printer head has used silver-filled silicon to create circuitry"
No, it didn't. That's SILICONE not silicon. I mean, come on. This is a technical article on a technical website. Can't we at least get basic chemistry right? Do you fill your car's gas tank with carbon? If there's one damn place on the internet where people can be expected to know enough about science to see the difference between a hard, shiny metallic element and a class of clear rubbery compounds that happen to contain that element, it should be here.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Needs to be about one tenth of the price before it will make much sense for anyone but people with money to burn to get one
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Sounds like "Real Housewives..."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It calls this functional circuitry. They laid down 1/4" wide conductive paths. Basically is just 5 wire pathways. How do you connect components like resistors? You can't solder them. This is basically worthless.
How about closeups of circuits made with this device? The demo vidio does not show the actual conductors. Sure, it may be able to throw down a few crude conductors but that is far from "complex circuits". To me this is yet another marketing post to get pre-orders on something that really does not work yet.
Normally, feces are made up of 75 percent water and 25 percent solid matter. About 30 percent of the solid matter consists of dead bacteria; about 30 percent consists of indigestible food matter such as cellulose; 10 to 20 percent is cholesterol and other fats; 10 to 20 percent is inorganic substances such as calcium phosphate and iron phosphate; and 2 to 3 percent is protein.
Source.
So you're wrong. But thank you for your trolling, it made me learn something new today.
`echo $[0x853204FA81]|tr 0-9 ionbsdeaml`@gmail.com
Once the replicators can make other (functioning) replicators it will be interesting. Send 1 replicator to Africa with some raw material and then print new replicators as you scale out. Remember to use all the village's clean water in this process too because, well you know, they obviously have been fine up until now without that water :)
Get over yourself. It was a typo.
I've thought about doing something like this with the same paint they use, but you can't get anything resembling high power out of them. The resistance is too high. You might be able to use an LED.
Oh, and as far as resistors, you don't need them. The paint is that resistive. It would work for buttons/switches, but not much else. If they had something that was not super expensive (silver) and not as resistive, it would work great.
There's also a few companies with conductive filament, with the same problem. Repraper comes to mind (unfortunate name, but they are chinese).
What would be great would be if this also had the ability to pull from a pile of stock parts, Atmega, arm chips, resistors, capacitors, etc. So that it could then put together a complete circuit, just squishing in the parts as needed during the printing process. To me the first real generation would be when I could print a new remote control.
The second generation would be when I could print a crappy cellphone. Or a game boy. Or a near perfect duplicate of a TI-89
And the third generation would be when I could print out a fairly good cellphone; say roughly an iphone 4.
I am not suggesting that it print out LCD screens but that it could insert electronics of that nature in while the printing process was underway.
But once you could do what I called the third generation there would be huge swaths of electronics items that could be printed. For instance right now I need another 4 port USB hub. I wouldn't mind building a new alarm system. I would love a keypad to start my car instead of keys or a fob.
Being able to print with essentially two different polymer heads is interesting, but not really all that impressive.
I would be substantially more impressed with a combination of a polymer extruder head, a copper wire feed apparatus that can slowly meter out and cut thin copper wire (non-lacquered), a non-heated extruder filled with silver solder paste, a strong IR lightsource that can flow the solder paste, and a pick and place arm.
To get clean copper traces embedded in the ABS plastic substrate, you just print channels and "wrap" bosses, anchor the wire at one end, spool it out while taught and sinch it up against the printed plastic bosses, then anchor at the other end, then cut.
One could print multiple layers of ABS substrate, embed multiple layers of wire traces, (MADE OF SOLID WIRE, not high resistance silicone) then paint, pick and place components, and IR beam between layers.
I really don't see why such a thing would be at all impossible to make. the 3d printer people need to up their game.
"No, it didn't. That's SILICONE not silicon."
What in the hell do you think silicone is made from?
Hint: There's a reason silicone lubes rip many rubberized sex toys apart, and it's not the suspension solvent of cyclopentasiloxane.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
That printing quality made me depressed. I know the raw materials needed are finicky and expensive by comparison, but why are all these low resolution injection printers getting all the attention when high resolution powder sintering and UV/near-UV curable plastic printers actually produce results that look useful.
Also, for the number of buttons on that controller, someone needs to take DC and digital circuits 101 and 102. An Arduino with that many leads for 6 buttons?!?... I bet they would build a keyboard that looked like Neo healing and had 2 seconds of latency. Crawl before you walk.
Have to say, I'm not impressed. You can buy conductive ink pens at Fry's or Radioshack that do prettymuch the same thing for about ten bucks. This just automated it.
Just a side note, this summary reads like a slashvertisement. Just sayin'
http://igg.me/at/minilaser/
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
What in the hell do you think silicone is made from?
Wikipedia explains it adequately:
Silicone is not to be confused with the chemical element silicon, a crystalline metalloid widely used in computers and other electronic equipment. Although silicones contain silicon atoms, they also include carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and perhaps other kinds of atoms as well, and have different physical and chemical properties than elemental silicon.
You also don't call petroleum graphite because it contains carbon...
[Not one of the above posters]
My god, quit relying upon inaccurate wikipedia for fuck's sake. They can't even keep current with LED technology. The carbon, hydrogen, oxygen in "silicone" are used as solvents (hydrocarboxy) and the rest is ground sand.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Yeah, stop getting facts in the way of my peculiar worldview or I'll go off the deep end!"
You're completely bonkers, Khyber.
Mostly random stuff.
Lol, it's more accurate than you. Let's quote Wikipedia again:
More precisely called polymerized siloxanes or polysiloxanes, silicones are mixed inorganic-organic polymers with the chemical formula [R2SiO]n, where R is an organic group such as methyl, ethyl, or phenyl.
A quick look at the chemical formula of a simple one shows your carbon and hydrogen tightly bound to the silicon. More complex monomers can also include oxygen and other atoms.
>> "No, it didn't. That's SILICONE not silicon."
> What in the hell do you think silicone is made from?
"This formula calls for sulfur, so let's just use sulfuric acid. It's made from sulfur, so it's the same thing, right?"
The carbon, hydrogen, oxygen in "silicone" are used as solvents (hydrocarboxy) and the rest is ground sand.
You really must be an idiot if you don't know the difference between chemical bonds and mixtures. And FWIW, Silica sand is not silicon either, it's silicon dioxide. It takes a lot of energy to reduce SiO2 to Si, which is part of the reason that a 300mm silicon boule costs over a million dollars (there are others), when a cubic meter of silica sand for the garden costs around $10.
There's no ground sand in decamethylcyclopentasiloxane, though I'm sure if you heat it enough in oxygen the resulting ash will contain silica.