3D printing created this drone, complete with circuitry
3D printing has been described as a force for revolutionary change, but with all the tchotchkes, jewelry and, lately, food, people are printing, it sometimes feels less like a revolution than an awesome hobby.
Advances in biomedical 3D printing certainly help dispel some of those notions. The world’s first 3D electronics printer from Voxel8 could eliminate them completely.
Voxel8 is a small high-tech materials firm in Summerville, Massachusetts, that has built what it believes is the World’s first 3D electronics printer. Previous electronics printing efforts have involved retrofitting existing 3D printers or printing out circuit boards using inkjet printers and a lot of elbow grease.
Voxel8’s 60-pound device works, to some extent, like traditional 3D printers, printing objects in layers Voxel8’s 60-pound device works, to some extent, like traditional 3D printers, printing objects in layers. It prints using PLA (polylactic acid) for the body of the electronic gadget and then uses specially formulated conductive silver ink for the embedded circuitry, which is printed via a process called pneumatic direct-write. Standalone chips can be placed in the 3D-printed object during the printing process and the printer will then lay down silver ink to make the connections.
“We’re essentially materials experts,” said Voxel8 cofounder and hardware lead Michael Bell. The 24-year-old Bell, who has dreamed of 3D printing electronics since he was in high school, told me that Voxel8 started as a research project at Harvard under the tutelage of Professor Jennifer A. Lewis, who ultimately founded Voxel8. The team performed research on conductive materials for years before settling on silver.
"It’s an order of magnitude more expensive than copper,” said Bell. In today’s circuit boards, copper is one of the most widely-used conductive materials. However Bell noted that the current method of circuit board creation, which uses printed circuit boards and the etching out of excess copper to reveal a circuit pattern “is extremely wasteful."
"3D printing allows you to only add the parts you need,” said Bell. And there’s the added benefit of being able to rapid prototype and even create electronics with what Bell calls “novel geometries."
Bell told me he initially wanted to use copper for the 3D printing process, “it’s such a great, cheap material,” but soon found that it would oxidize immediately after printing. Silver is stable and you can print at room temperature.
Getting there
The Voxel8 team had some practice before trying to master 3D electronics printing. In 2013, a team of Professor Lewis’s Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences researchers figured out how to 3D-print micro batteries for use in miniature robots and implants. 3D-printed batteries, however, do not include complex circuitry, and that remained a goal for the team.
One thing the team really needed to realize this goal, according to Bell, was software. They wanted to design electronics within printable 3D form factors They wanted to design electronics within printable 3D form factors. 3D design is really CAD or Computer Aided Design, an area in which Voxel8 partner Autodesk has considerable expertise.
“Both Professor Jennifer Lewis and I spoke at the Printed Electronics Conference. We had a common goal: To make 3D-printed electronics a reality,” said Autodesk Principal Research Engineer Karl Willis in an email to Mashable.
Autodesk offered to build new 3D electronic printing design software for Voxel8. It’s called Project Wire. “It’s the first product to enable truly freeform 3D circuitry to be created for 3D printing. It’s exciting because the design space is largely unconstrained,” wrote Willis.
Autodesk brought in a software developer who, according to Bell, more or less designed the software right next to the printer.
Bell, who studied computer, hardware and software engineering as an undergraduate, said he soon realized that “those problems were easy. [3D electronic printing] was a material problem.” Now, in addition to conductive silver, the Voxel8 team has developed roughly 50 materials, many of which may be useful in the electronics printing process.
The possibilities
While the commercial $8,999 printer is months away from delivery, the current version is already printing 3D electronics, including light-up decorations, a USB stick and even a drone. There are, however, even more exciting prospects.
“The future of manufacturing is about integration — moving from assembly of multiple parts, to printing components and the device in its entirety,” wrote Willis.
Bell agrees and told me that current hearing aid shells are 3D-printed and then a technician carefully inserts all the electronics. The next generation of Voxel8’s printer will “3D-print everything in the hearing aid: wiring, shell — the whole thing completed without additional labor.”
3D electronic printing and the software that drives it will surely improve. Eventually, we may be holding 3D-printed phones.
Autodesk’s Willis certainly believes it: “This is a decades-long vision for changing the fundamentals of how we manufacture devices. I absolutely believe we will be printing smartphones in some capacity in the future.”
Printing smartphones is the holy grail of 3D printing electronics,” said Bell, but cautioned that millions of smartphones are already made in the most cost-effective way. There will be a place for 3D printing in the smartphone manufacturing process.
“We envision a future where we can use our materials expertise and replace many of the non-integrated circuit components, such as resistors, capacitors and inductors with printed inks,” said Bell.
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