3D printing components, whether they’re made out of metal, plastic or cake, is one thing. Printing a complete circuit board is another entirely and while it’s been possible to print them for a while, it hasn’t been affordable. Brisbane-based company Cartesian Co. is looking to change that with a newly Kickstarted project called the EX1, a relatively affordable circuit-board printer aimed at hobbyists.
The EX1 is designed to “…allow you to 3D print circuit boards, layering silver nano particles onto paper or any suitable surface to rapidly create a circuit board”, according to the project’s Kickstarter page. Cartesian claims to be able to print to a variety of substrates, from plastic to glass, wood, ceramic, paper and cloth, among others, opening the door for a variety of home-brewed electronic creations. It’s able to perform the way that it does thanks to two cartridges, similar to inkjet equivalents, which mix two chemical compounds to create the silver tracks on a given substrate.
Cartesian were looking for a mere $30,000 in order to get their prototype circuit board printer on the go and they’ve almost doubled that amount about a day into their funding campaign. Which is just as well because the company claims to have several new ideas for improving their prototype and circuit printing on the cheap in general.
Source: Tech Crunch