Comment by devrandomguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by devrandomguy | Hacker News Reader

Imagine if this technology was available as inkjet cartridges. The potential for decentralization of electronics manufacturing, is staggering. So is the potential of electronics at the price of fancy photo paper. We would finally be in a position to begin replicating the open source software revolution, in electronics. The power of the hardware manufacturing giants would melt away.

High performance, nanometer-scale silicon would obviously still have to be manufactured the classic way, because, nanometers. But, instead of buying a precious tablet, you order a ribbon of of peel & stick wafers, of commodity CPU and RAM chips. You then stick them onto a printed, flexible nv-mem + screen to enable it to compute at modern speeds.

As people get used to disposable, custom electronics, they learn that for most of what they do with a single sheet of "paper", they actually need very little computing power. Rugged, cheap, micrometer-scale CPUs make a comeback. Kids study them in grade school, using an ordinary optical microscope. IC designers start to optimize for readability. The general public begins to take responsibility for their hardware and software stack, the way they take responsibility for their vehicle and their home.

/dream

This isn't really that much different from etching your own PCB. You just print the circuit on a laser printer, stick it on a copper board, pour some etchant and that's about it.

Of course, you then have to solder the components, which is a time-consuming and difficult process, what with the size of electronics these days. Most components' pads are a fraction of a square millimeter.

EDIT: I may be misunderstanding your point, as the article talks about printed displays etc, but I don't see how you could just get an inkjet cartridge that would allow a home printer to create a display...

> [...] pour some etchant [...] solder the components

I think that's where the differences would start for most people. In the parent's vision, you could assemble complex PCBs using ordinary office supplies and with little knowledge except about the circuit you want to build.

Today, you'd at least need a dedicated hobbyists' level of space, tools, and knowledge how to use the tools safely.

Unless your printer was just spitting out downloaded circuits, I am skeptical that you'd reach the masses. Already the Arduino et al. has helped to let people make electronics via more software and less hardware, and even that doesn't mean that there's one in every home.

This Thinfilm company claims to be able print basic displays already, and hints that the process involves 5 layers of material. I'm guessing that there are two outer conductive layers, of longitudinal and lateral electrode arrays respectively. Two of the inner layers would form the P-N junction of an OLED.

Not sure what that fifth layer would be, though. It could be something as mundane as a non-stretchable structural support. Or, it could be that there is more to OLEDs than the Wikipedia article lets on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Polymer_light-emitting_di...

As for how this would be printed, that is probably just a matter of coaxing the required layer-chemicals into a suspension that has the right consistency for their own printers. I recall an article a while ago, about some pharmaceutical researchers teaming up with HP to develop chemical print heads that spit out protein solutions, and then spit drugs onto them, in order to rapidly test millions of different concentrations. These people might even be using that same printer.

As long as it isn't HP selling the cartridges.

"Aw, man, this thing barely printed two displays and a keyboard and now I need to buy a new cartridge for $10,000."

Hey! Whatever your job is, I like the way you think(tm) and would like to have people like you in the team! If you could use a free pool of computing resources and want to start building something that would actually make the world a better place(not-for-profit, no cheap, outsourced r&d labor === VC* targeted sell-your-soul project) - send me an email!

I can't tell if this is a joke or not (ambiguous X,Y,Z === A), but you don't have an email address if you're really looking for them to send you one.

OK, I may have used a comma instead of a semicolon(read "X; Y,Z).. also, I'm not an active yc contributor in terms of posts/comments - thought my email address would be visible, thanks for pointing that out. I'm also not really good at getting my point across :) and I'm only able to "sell" things I believe in and even then it takes some time - see my previous point - anyway, no joke, just clumsiness.

Good morning, stranger. I am curious about what you all are up to; the idea of a non-profit that has access to computing resources and bandwidth, is kind of interesting. Do you have something like a blog, a twitter feed, or a github org page?

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