EX1 by Cartesian Co. – 3D Printing Circuits

I guess this is less messy than copper prototyping (acid etching/gantry ablation/vectorboarding), but silver is more expensive, ~100x.

Also, -1 for "help start the home PCB printing revolution." Hobbyists have been making home PCBs for longer than I've been alive. It's not a revolution. Not that many people really want to do this. They could right now with copper, but the range of useful things you can build at home is limited, because having a circuit board is only 1/10th of the problem. Further, prototype services like http://oshpark.com offer high-quality services, including double-sided boards.

This is pretty awesome. And it is the first time I've heard of someone doing this with precipitate chemistry which seems really clever.

It also brings a lot of questions to the table which, when answered, will push electronics prototyping to a new place.

First is signal integrity issues. Getting some electrons from point A to point B is cool, getting them there along a path that consistently has the same impedence is a bit harder, do able though with sufficient control.

It's fortunate that many of the inkjet patents have expired, that kept this approach pinned up for years. I look forward to these guys getting funded and moving the prototype PCB market from a pint of etchant and a copper plated board, into something more advanced.

For this to be truly useful, there needs to be a way for traces to cross (usually accomplished with multiple layers plus vias). It seems it would be possible to add a second, insulating ink to print between traces at crossing points.

Wait - there's no 3D to this, is there? It would be more accurate to call this "Printing Circuits" than "3D Printing Circuits".

This is interesting, but not really much more practical than etching (albeit cleaner). It's a neat proof of concept and that's about it.

This looks awesome!

this is effing brilliant.