Epson prints 1mm thick circuit boards on an inkjet

Really brings new meaning to the term "printed circuit board" when Epson goes and creates a process by which an inkjet printer can literally spit out complicated boards. Circuit paths are drawn by conductive ink and layered between coats of insulator ink. Naturally you shouldn't expect to be able to download and shoot out the latest nVidia or ATI board every 1.3 days they release a new one, but this could mean really, really big things for portable electronics and wearable computing since these boards are only 1mm thick at 20 layers (trust us, that's pretty amazing).

[Via ArsTechnica]

[jon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

sure beats the other printer method of creating circuit boards i'm all too use to... you know printing the traces on iron paper and then attempting a perfect iron-on transfer with the copper clad board (it never comes out perfect).

[Andrew @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

This is just a press release touting the fact that they *did* it. Nothing about how mnay tries it took them to get it right. Or about cost of conductive/insualtor inks. Or how much current these trace can handle. It would suck if an inkjet-printed circuit board could only handle microamps before the traces vaporized themselves.

Still, it's a neat idea. And if it can be done on an industrial scale, it will reduce both production and transportation costs for electronics.

Now they need to work to creating printable semiconductors. I'll be happy when they can print MOSFETs onto the boards too.

--Andrew

[Funkstar @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

never done it that way, we just printed them onto acetates, taped them to the raw board, into a light box then into the acid bath. The other way we tried at university was with rub on stencils. sheets of line and pads you then scribbled over, transfering them to the copper. not easy to get right.

[mickster @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

I heard about this technology at a technology conference in April 2004. I have no doubts that Epson's success will lead to low cost circuit boards that no longer need to be boards.

LcOS projectors will benefit as will other nano-technologies.

This is a harbinger of great new things. To Andrew, above, the cost of the ink and materials will be lower than that of inks and papers today for photo printing. With the mass adoption of flexible circuit boards, you can expect the demand to lower prices well below what it costs today to produce conventional circuit boards.

This will allow you to print a t-shirt full of circuits, or a soft device full of hardware...

Imaging a computer that literally can fold up like a piece of paper when not in use, or can be rolled and sent away...

The future is coming...

[James Guess @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

The biggest problem Epson has with their ink jets is that the heads are mounted on the printer and always clog within a year or so, even if you only use Epson inks and run recommended cleaning and printing procedures. Other printers that contain a replacement head in the cartridge last far longer, although the print quality may not quite match Epson. I would much prefer that Epson fix the clogging problems than design a circuit replacement that does absolutely nothing to improve ink delivery reliability. I bought and used several Epsons over the years and finally threw up my hands over head clogging and swithed to HP. Guess what? No more ink clogs!!

[ouachiski @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

I am sudenly reminded of the jacket from Back to the Future 3. The one that fitted itself, dried itself, and talked. Buy the way James Guess a coton swab and some 91% alchohol will fix those print jets right up.

[Ink Cartridge @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

Good

[Handy Kirk @ Dec 19th 2005 1:03AM]

A practical Epson 'flat bed' printer to print etch resist (floorpolish) directly onto copper laminated boards would be a big success.

This would save cutting up the printer mechanism on a standard printer and add ones own 'flatbed' and transform the roller platen stepper pulses into a 'linear' pulse train that drives the 'flat bed'.

From what I have found on the net this setup was demonstrated in 2002 by an electronic designer who was not interested in making the printer he wanted to make double sided prototype circuits real fast.

By the way he used a cheap Lexmark and the ink cartridge was filled with floorpolish.