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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

Are there any 3D printers that can print, amongst other substrates, conductive layers? It would open up a whole world of 3D chip design to amateurs.

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Yes. The reprappers are making strides in this direction. There's also conductive ABS plastic.

http://www.repraper.com/goods.php?id=172

http://blog.reprap.org/search/label/Printing%20Conductors

http://blog.reprap.org/2012/04/some-more-printed-circuitry.h...

However, you're thinking too far ahead. The current home printers don't have the resolution to print circuits on the scale of a chip. You could probably do it, but the chip would be basic, and quite big and slow.

I'm quite willing to settle for just printing PCBs at home. There are low-volume PCB printing services but they are still quite expensive, not to mention slow to turn around. There is a strong space here for a 3D printer to come in.

Milling seems like a better bet (than printing) for home PCBs without the etching. It's cheaper and more accurate, like this one:

http://www.coolcomponents.co.uk/catalog/imodela-milling-mach...

Downside is that there's no solder resist, so SMT parts would be tricky/impossible to solder. Also the above model only handles tiny boards — something that can do a standard 160x100 mm eurocard would be nice.

As a hobbyist, your bigger problem is going to be accuracy, not capability. Unless someone comes up with some cool tricks (like the self-aligning gates in photolithography), you are going to need some fancy hardware to achieve chip-like printing resolutions.

Edit: apparently, photolithography has been applied to 3d printing. If the photolithography equipment is not expensive, this may be less of an issue.

In a word: Yes.

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/22/3d-printed-circuit-boards-usi...

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