I remember that video. Hey, I wonder what happened to that $3000 Micronics SLS printer? Wasn't it a kickstarter? I remember that being a big deal at the time, and I guess it suddenly disappeared?
> We got bought by Formlabs in 2024
> Formlabs sells their own SLS printer for $25000
> Formlabs charges a license fee to be able to print with custom materials like Applied Science did [0]
> The Meta-NFS device concentrates microwave energy into a zone smaller than 200 micrometers, about the width of a human hair, enabling electronics to be printed onto bone, tissue, and living plants
> The Meta-NFS works by heating from within the deposited material itself. A conventional transmission-line microwave applicator
I can't think of any sci-fi plot that anticipated this. Heating a material from within to apply on to sensitive mediums like skin tissue potentially opening applications that go beyond nano-suit imaginations.
I guess they consider that a solved problem: when you can drop arbitrary connections without meaningful heating of stuff outside of the connection, just glue your SMD parts wherever you consider convenient and fuse lines to its connection pads.
But practical application would likely stick to more or less conventional boards (tiny ones for sure) and use those ink lines only for where it's needed. Unless perhaps there's an application where crossing over with simple fused layer printing allows something revolutionary from going 3D? But 2D boards are really, really cheap and multiple layers are already giving ever conceivable advantage 3D could give, outside of stuff like antenna geometries.
For one-off and prototyping, an integrated fused layer + pick&place + circuit fuser machine could be super attractive of course: basically bridging the gap between breadboard and production quality. But I really doubt that this device would be anywhere near hobby workshop tinkering range...
I dont get this - you can just print with SMD paste and then reflow the whole thing at once - though you will need high temp materials to do that, but several amateurs have done it.
Afaik there are a lot more high temp UV resins you can print with.
I actually tried mixing in fine copper dust with fine SAC305 paste to create a non-liquid amalgam on re-flow, but the void/inclusion problem was worse than conventional SLS processes.
Also looked at RF and metal salt processes, but it had more problems/hazardous-material than traditional laser setups.
The core problem is making these machines safe and cheap to use. =3
once one can make traces in 3D as part of a case/shell/frame/structure things get _very_ interesting --- consider that one electronics designer actually worked up a 3D CAD system:
>My primary use case for 3D CAD is designing 3D-printed enclosures for my electronics projects.
So, imagine what folks like that will make when they are able to 3D print a full circuit board as part of a structure, with components place/oriented in it in novel ways (heat dissipation? LEDs to indicate status?)....
Status LED and button placement, those would be the the major benefits over conventional boards in non-exotic fields like putting circuits on plants. Would be fantastically valuable for the one-off tinkerer. But yeah, substituting home etching or milling and reflow would also be quite a dream come true.
Though, I generally like the idea of circuit traces embedded directly in mechanical design of a product, I suppose this would make devices completely and utterly non-repairable. Not that there's something new in this, but imagine, debugging a 3d volumetric circuit, where chips and discrete components baked solid into medium? And I also wonder, where such super high level of integration would be necessary, other than medical/wearable/implantable devices...
The smaller you can make things or more integral the more interesting you can do things - vape carts are a good example where it might actually reduce the total ewaste if the chip and the body were integral (though clearly would still create it)
If you can print small enough with this technology I'm pretty sure you can make transistors - sort of 1980 era transistors, not very dense, but if you are printing bulk materials you can build in 3D rather than 2D, make interesting numbers of transistors, cpus in everything!
I wish them well, but this has all the signs of nanotech vaporware. The article even mentions graphene, and empirically, that seems to be a death kiss for every promising technology announced in the past three decades.
The tech to make your own PCBs at home already exists, it just doesn't really make sense to spend weeks making inferior boards when you can order custom boards for pennies and have them at your doorstep in a bit over a week.
A few days ago, I was thinking of trying a lower-cost, similar idea with a pen plotter.
This is a much more promising technique from Applied Science: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIqhpxul_og
I remember that video. Hey, I wonder what happened to that $3000 Micronics SLS printer? Wasn't it a kickstarter? I remember that being a big deal at the time, and I guess it suddenly disappeared?
> We got bought by Formlabs in 2024
> Formlabs sells their own SLS printer for $25000
> Formlabs charges a license fee to be able to print with custom materials like Applied Science did [0]
ah, well that explains it.
0 - https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Setting-up-Open-Mater...
> The Meta-NFS device concentrates microwave energy into a zone smaller than 200 micrometers, about the width of a human hair, enabling electronics to be printed onto bone, tissue, and living plants
> The Meta-NFS works by heating from within the deposited material itself. A conventional transmission-line microwave applicator
I can't think of any sci-fi plot that anticipated this. Heating a material from within to apply on to sensitive mediums like skin tissue potentially opening applications that go beyond nano-suit imaginations.
The article reads like they are talking about the traces. What about components like surface mount resistors, IC's, etc?
The examples I noticed were things like antennas, grids, a microspring. I didn't see anything resembling a full circuit.
I guess they consider that a solved problem: when you can drop arbitrary connections without meaningful heating of stuff outside of the connection, just glue your SMD parts wherever you consider convenient and fuse lines to its connection pads.
But practical application would likely stick to more or less conventional boards (tiny ones for sure) and use those ink lines only for where it's needed. Unless perhaps there's an application where crossing over with simple fused layer printing allows something revolutionary from going 3D? But 2D boards are really, really cheap and multiple layers are already giving ever conceivable advantage 3D could give, outside of stuff like antenna geometries.
For one-off and prototyping, an integrated fused layer + pick&place + circuit fuser machine could be super attractive of course: basically bridging the gap between breadboard and production quality. But I really doubt that this device would be anywhere near hobby workshop tinkering range...
I dont get this - you can just print with SMD paste and then reflow the whole thing at once - though you will need high temp materials to do that, but several amateurs have done it.
Afaik there are a lot more high temp UV resins you can print with.
Reflowing smd paste inside print won't work reliably as the solder will tend to form blobs instead of keeping the track shape
I actually tried mixing in fine copper dust with fine SAC305 paste to create a non-liquid amalgam on re-flow, but the void/inclusion problem was worse than conventional SLS processes.
Also looked at RF and metal salt processes, but it had more problems/hazardous-material than traditional laser setups.
The core problem is making these machines safe and cheap to use. =3
Components are pretty easily done via pick-and-place, which was just demonstrated on video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGZ0qpPN1uk
once one can make traces in 3D as part of a case/shell/frame/structure things get _very_ interesting --- consider that one electronics designer actually worked up a 3D CAD system:
https://dune3d.org/
just for making 3D printed enclosures:
>My primary use case for 3D CAD is designing 3D-printed enclosures for my electronics projects.
So, imagine what folks like that will make when they are able to 3D print a full circuit board as part of a structure, with components place/oriented in it in novel ways (heat dissipation? LEDs to indicate status?)....
Status LED and button placement, those would be the the major benefits over conventional boards in non-exotic fields like putting circuits on plants. Would be fantastically valuable for the one-off tinkerer. But yeah, substituting home etching or milling and reflow would also be quite a dream come true.
Though, I generally like the idea of circuit traces embedded directly in mechanical design of a product, I suppose this would make devices completely and utterly non-repairable. Not that there's something new in this, but imagine, debugging a 3d volumetric circuit, where chips and discrete components baked solid into medium? And I also wonder, where such super high level of integration would be necessary, other than medical/wearable/implantable devices...
The smaller you can make things or more integral the more interesting you can do things - vape carts are a good example where it might actually reduce the total ewaste if the chip and the body were integral (though clearly would still create it)
Design the "board" as a central component w/ one or more snap-on ocovers?
They are produced by companies that specialise in producing ICs.
They can be placed manually or automated.
If you can print small enough with this technology I'm pretty sure you can make transistors - sort of 1980 era transistors, not very dense, but if you are printing bulk materials you can build in 3D rather than 2D, make interesting numbers of transistors, cpus in everything!
A coil by any other name is an inductor, and that is really cool.
I can't imagine it is better than laser processes, but still impressive. =3
When is this coming to a machine sold by some company to consumers? I really want to make my PCBs at home.
I wish them well, but this has all the signs of nanotech vaporware. The article even mentions graphene, and empirically, that seems to be a death kiss for every promising technology announced in the past three decades.
The tech to make your own PCBs at home already exists, it just doesn't really make sense to spend weeks making inferior boards when you can order custom boards for pennies and have them at your doorstep in a bit over a week.
OCTattoos coming soon?
Hopefully not with Morning Light Mountain as well.
Yeah but it still can't make my food hot in the middle