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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...

by WillAdams8 hours ago|

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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?)....

by usrusr3 hours ago|

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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.

by skandinaff8 hours ago|

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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...

by hilariously5 hours ago|

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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)

by WillAdams7 hours ago|

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Design the "board" as a central component w/ one or more snap-on ocovers?

by torginus7 hours ago|

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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.

by StingyJelly7 hours ago|

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Reflowing smd paste inside print won't work reliably as the solder will tend to form blobs instead of keeping the track shape

by Joel_Mckay6 hours ago|

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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

by Moosdijk8 hours ago|

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They are produced by companies that specialise in producing ICs.

They can be placed manually or automated.

by Taniwha7 hours ago|

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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!

by Archit3ch1 hours ago|

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Home-printed 80s transistors would unlock a lot of analog-style guitar pedals. :D

by Joel_Mckay6 hours ago|

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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