[CarryTheWhat] put up an Instructable on his endeavours in printing circuit boards for solder free electronics. He managed to print a flashlight where the only non-printed parts are a pair of batteries and a couple of LEDs.
The circuit is a weird mix of point to point and Manhattan style circuit construction; after modeling a printed plastic plate, [CarryTheWhat] added a few custom component holders to hold LEDs, batteries, and other tiny electronic bits.
To deliver power to each electronic bit, the components are tied off on blue pegs. These pegs are attached to each other by conductive thread much like wirewrap circuit construction.
Right now, the circuits are extremely simple, but they really remind us of a few vintage ham radio rigs. While this method is most likely too complex to print 3D printer electronics (a much desired and elusive goal), it’s very possible to replicate some of the simpler projects we see on Hackaday.
[CarryTheWhat] put the models and files up on GitHub if you’d like to try out a build of your own.
http://blog.reprap.org/2012/04/some-more-printed-circuitry.html
I was just reading about actual printed circuits the other day. Which is a way bigger hack then this ;-)
Yes I saw this too — awesome stuff! Perhaps holds a lot of potential, but you’d be hard pressed to make something useful with it right now.
With this library, you can print an LED flashlight right now with just some cheap conductive thread.
wow nice, and what about combining the two hacks, printing with a spool of conductive wire?
Now THAT would be cool! a filament with spool of thread embedded… and some way to snip it….
There are many paths to printable electronics — what I was looking for in this project was the shortest route with what we got :)
Snipping it wouldnt be that hard,a scalpel blade and a servo should work I think
One step closer to proper Electronic LEGOs. \
This sort of reminds me of one of those hundreds-in-one electronic project kits. At least, if you built one of those with this printed method it would be pretty fantastic.
This is just wire-wrap, except incredibly bulky and even less compatible with current component packages.
There’s nothing wrong with automating wirewrap imho