Post by jimustanguitar on Feb 22, 2015 23:40:24 GMT -5
Hey Guys!
After our email thread in wake of the Voltera release, let's start working on our own, open circuit printer. If you know others on different forums, let's link them here and try to have one, single project thread for it.
I see 2 main hurdles:
First, we need a paste extruder. Several already exist (did you notice that the Voltera team invested in a paste extruder kickstarter last year?). Let's either pick a design, or create our own. I propose that we make it chuck into a pen holder module so that any printer on the market (or ShapeOko, or whatever) can easily be adapted to use it.
Second, we know that we need a conductive paste that will bake to a board without beading up, and that isn't too high of a resistance... Silver nano-particle is what others who've done this have named their material. Does silver paste exist in other fields? What about "metal clay" that artists use, or the solder that jewelers use?
I talked to Shane about using Graphite for the circuit medium. But this is just one reason I bought that XY table kit from MakeBlock. I'm in.
It's something I'd like to work on (a UV curable conductive resin) but right now the big thing on my plate is formulating a jewelry casting resin for MakerJuice:
As far as a homebuilt solution, I still like the archimedes screw.
Honestly I think you'd be much better off using a syringe pump. You're going to want a tiny orifice and a high degree of control over the flow, thus a syringe pump is in order.
The paste extruders at MRRF got the wheels in my head turning about this one again... There are also some graphene possibilities on the horizon for our group.
The paste extruders at MRRF got the wheels in my head turning about this one again... There are also some graphene possibilities on the horizon for our group.
I wonder if we can crack that open and put it into a syringe. I still want to explore this as well. I'm thinking we can make a smaller syringe pump to adapt to the Rostock.
Some things are meant to be closed. Your mind isn't one of them.