OT: Here ya go, PCB's the easy way....

I was hoping they'd be printing (squirting) both conductor and insulator. That way you could go multilayer.

Cheers

--
Syd

I didn't read thru the whole article, yet, but, if it does 2-sided, that will be adequate for my G-jobs ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Den onsdag den 4. december 2013 21.44.07 UTC+1 skrev Jim Thompson:

$300 will buy _alot_ of PCBs, e.g.

and they are real two layer boards with solder mask and silk, that you can solder

The printed ones you link to can't even be soldered, you have to glue the components on with conductive glue

-Lasse

Well, skip that idea. I was hoping someone had figured out a cheap way for me to churn out a PCB in minutes. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142   Skype: Contacts Only  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

where's an EFFECTIVE 3D printer when you need one?

Didn't some one come up with a inkjet that printed Lacquer? You could invert the image, print, then etch. Then of course, drill the holes which seems to be left out of the process above. SMT is another story.

This is an interesting link, he dismantled the printer to feed PCB stock.

Cheer

way for me to churn out a PCB in minutes. "

How about a plotter modified with a Dremel tool ?

You know someone atually did that with a plasma cutter and they were selling the things in a machinery magazine. Now if that could beapplied here somehow...

The problem is no doubt the holes. Can you do EVERYTHING on one side with SMDs ?

Silver ink and silver epoxy are cheap? I don't think so.

How about printing an etchant resist onto copper clad polyimide?

There are wax-based inkjet printers. Make one with two heads to print double sided in one pass, then drop straight into the etch. Plausible?

A collegue of mine has this 900USD PCB milling machine at home, bought from china:

We have a professional machine at work. We can make simple PCBs in less than an hour

Cheers

Klaus

I like that they are talking about battery chargers (high currents in traces). Good luck with that with those trace resistances

/Klaus

Using ordinary photo resist board it only takes about half an hour for a single sided board, a double sided takes 45 minutes. A bit longer if it needs drilling.

There have been conductive silver ink pens for decades. And things like membrane switches are already silver ink on plastic. Nether one makes usable, solderable PC boards.

Surface-mount adapters and copperclad and a Dremel makes nice small circuits quickly. And no good designer should need to breadboard much more than small circuits.

Since I discovered dental burrs, I'm doing relatively "fine line" (like SOT23 level) copperclad breadboards. It's fun to actually get away from a screen and do something physical now and then.

--

John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc 
www.highlandtechnology.com   jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com    

Precision electronic instrumentation 
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators 
Custom timing and laser controllers 
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links 
VME  analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer 
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

Not as advertised! AFAIK there are no inkjet printers that allow RIGID "paper". Liquid with silver particles that conduct after drying is possible but tricky - and might not hold up to bending; if not, the flexible "option" dies.

Insulators are easy; prolly need a pass for each layer.

Would need to flip the paper over and punch holes at minimum.

Den torsdag den 5. december 2013 18.26.10 UTC+1 skrev John Larkin:

I build a cnc router from alu extrusions and various ebay finds, with engraving bit like these:

it does sot23 size features pretty good and from eagle making gcode for isolation milling and drilling is literally one command

-Lasse

there are several types of inkjet printers that can print directly on CDROMs they don't bend...

-Lasse

I wonder about the "carbide" claim. I might get some of these and do an XRF test to see if they contain any tungsten.

For the price, I would doubt it. And they are careful not to say the word.