oh my friend is gonna be happy, he wants to make whole circuits or whatever, he was having one of those 'IMAgiNE whAT you Can DOO with THIS!' 'moments ..lol
but I can see the benifit of eventually being able to print out all the electronics for this stuff too ... hummm
I can see the first person to do that would be remembered forever!
just need to make better filament
This has been discussed many times... Unfortunately there is no practical solution yet. A cnc router for track isolation routing remains the easiest turn-key prototyping solution. People have tried fdm printing with solder and eutectic allloys such as Wood's metal or Field's metal... But apparently not successfully. If memory serves there is an issue with current nozzle designs, which are typically machined from brass. I think these metals in a molten state actually dissolve brass.
Conductive polymers so far have too much resistance as mentioned. The currently available conductive ABS has very high resistance and it would be very difficult to get a metallic suspension that's extraditable while maintaining contact between the particles. Even the best conductive inks that are designed for repairing PCB traces have quite high resistance, although I have heard of some success with people using conductive ink pens on pen-plotters or cnc router gantries. But you really can't solder on to these.
Perhaps a syringe of solder paste could be used in a paste extruder and then the result heated to fuse the solder paste... but solder paste is very expensive.
Cheers,
Troy.
Here's an interesting related page:
http://reprap.org/wiki/FutureToolIdeas
By the way... If anyone can come up with a conductive polymer or extrudible metal suspension that works it would be Kai Parthy... He seems to be a genius when it comes to inventing new (and unlikely) FDM printing materials.
Cheers,
Troy.
CodeMaven, This is Erik (Alice's friend), do you think we could just talk with JPL or Nasa about how to develop a extreme high temp alloy - cobalt / solid-carbon / ceramic extruder Head for the conductive filament, and likewise a companion high-temp fiament for insulation/structure - it would be layed out at a near-extreme temp, and then when it cools it would have high versatility, or otherwise the effect we are looking for?
And how about for such a thing - A CHILLED PLATFORM, or whole Chamber - with liquid nitrogen in a loop or something - is that crazy? - maybe make each wafer/layer separate, then fuse them together after?
Everyone talks about a 'Heated' bed - how about a 'Chilled' one! - 'as options for such a specialized tangent of an idea.
I can just imagine who ever can pull that off would litterally be written on the cap stone/marker for this revolution 
i mean - doing it at hOMe! woahh
anyway im gonna check the link, thanks!, and take a look around ... i'm sure theres a way, then we could bring the self replicating factor up near the 99% mark .... motors and chips would be the last ... Come ON StarTrek!!
ohh BTW TNG is on Space channel just now ....... gtg ..
Interesting... But Electron Beam Melting is much more promising... It turns out that there are people working on amateur EBM setups. It's almost as complex as what you're describing above, but having some previous experience with electron guns and high vacuum I know that it is possible... The difficulty is the vacuum system... I'm not sure what range you would need exactly... It would probably start to work as high as 1x10e-3 torr, but I would think that to get any serious efficiency you would need to get down to 1x10e-5 or lower which requires a turbomolecular pump or a diffusion pump. I would be worried about getting metal powder into the pumping system then... especially with a turbopump where it could cause catastrophic (explosive) failure if a particle hit a turbine blade on edge or got into the bearings. I have 3 turbopumps, not sure I'd want to risk any of them in this..
Construction wise, it's similar to my fusor that I built a few years ago. I actually etched a nice gouge in one of my bell jars with a stray electron beam that escaped from an uneven grid... That e-beam would have easily melted metal powder. Unfortunately all of my fusor equipment is back in storage in Toronto.
I think this should be the URL to my fusor pictures on picassa...
but it seems that they've migrated it to Google Plus... and I've never used Google Plus (nor did I ever intend to).... and it's blocked here in the office anyway... so I have no idea if this URL works or where it will take your really...
Cheers,
Troy.
The link to the pictures works great!
CodeMaven, [ This is Erik again.. i guess i should just make an account eh.. 
]
So,
OHH MY G*D!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?! HAH! .. That looks like Einstein and Jordy Laforge got together and made 'My First Di-lithium Easy Bake Oven' !! I'm amazed! .. I bow to that level of enginuity sir! .. well done!
So whats all that set you back? ( and dare i ask what other time-travel toys you've created? ) like 100k ? .. more?
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____ Cannot link these particular pictures :( Please Click link to see:
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.. I ... wow ... im guessing jules verne personally visited you, and left you with his nest egg.
Anyway, give me a moment, i need to take all that in, .... ok so i hear you about the alternatives available for different applications of metal printing, circuit etching, and well .. Transwarp subspace dark-matter sintering', with an extra interpanitary travel setting... o_O .. i went through that list you linked for a while, different tool heads, verrrry interesting! .. and I'm particular to whatever is basicly accessable and/or lower cost for the average person, thats what really pushes all this stuff forward - more people interested and getting their hands on equipment for testing.. I guess the streingth in numbers thing ... anyway, i'm particular to the 1W+ laser setups .. I was looking into getting one of those hand held starwarzy jobies they have online, wicked laser i think it was called, i know i've read that they can be cranked right up, and active cooled, aimed through some apertures and used to produce quite an effect - i know theres all kinds of other lab style set-up stuff that would be better - i just also like that you could take it with you and cause some alien landing sequence out in the forest ... .. so the user-level (inexpensive-as-possible) addons to say - an ultimaker, that raises a brow, I'd love to have all these pro machines made into cheaper home applications / kits.
anyhoo, i really think you should continue your work!, you definetly look like your 'on to stuff, and i know we would all benifit from it one day, hats off to you sir for walking the path i hope to travel one day, first, Alice and i will be venturing the simple printing path, and making some door stopps, and cat toys ..heh' ... she just told me she wants to make shoes and earings, and her mum wants a new selectable hose sprayer head for the garden ....... and i would like an active interdimentional phase inducing coil, and later maybe a flux capacitor, i have an old 240Z that i could make look strikingly like the delorean, with a little elbow grease .... but we'll see how it goes.
i just cant believe how interesting all this is!, we Must take home fab and production to the next level. future genereations will look back at now' and see us as the pioneers, and thank us! IT IS SO fitting the ultimaker is made out of wood! - honestly think in 50 years what all this will seem/look like to our grand kids .........
i knOW the next major step is printing circuits, and getting |that| much closer to disconnecting from big industry.
We need to get Erik (hey that name is familliar) to then have an IC board section to YouMagine! .. Get all these designs out there!
You can't do much with 1 watt of laser power other than pop balloons and melt thin black plastic bags... slowly. However those lasers are fun to play with if you are _very_ careful.
Infrared Solid State lasers are available up to about 15W, Which may be approaching usefulness... Typically laser cutters are at least 30 Watt or higher. I would think that you could possibly do practical SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) with dark plastic using a 15W laser, but not metal. Also, they're only 808nm and unfortunately there are a lot of materials that are quite transparent to that wavelength which means that they cannot be cut or processed in any way. Laser cutters typically use CO2 lasers that are aroun 10,600nm wavelength... And much cheaper and more efficient than solid state... The problem with CO2 lasers is that they tend to be large. A 100watt CO2 laser is around 6 feet long I think.
Regards,
Troy.
This week I attended the Inside 3D Printing conference in San Jose where saw a terrific presentation from a representative of PARC, showing their progress in Printed Electronics.
It was an inspiring presentation, showing how their R&D in conductive inks have yielded successes in additive manufactured transistors, coils, sensors, circuits, and batteries. One prototype showed a printed circuit, which included a temperature sensor, circuit, battery and display which would alter the display if a threshold temp was exceeded... imagine your frozen food with a embedded printed circuit in the packaging, alerting you if the temperature has risen above 35 degs... a 3Dprinted spoiler alert. 
From what I gathered at the conference, this is now primarily a material sciences game. With regard to FDM strategies, there will be and need to be advances in multi-head printing's soft-side [g-code generation, slicing algorithms, etc.] But IMHO, the next "wow" moments will be in conductive extrudable materials, allowing the creative plug-n-play integration of OTS components with printed parts. I imagine the open-source community is ripe for this realm of play and collaboration.
On the commercial side of additive manufacturing, I expect we'll see a new class of units, leveraging advances such as those of PARC's conductive inks.. 3DPrinters with dozens of heads, able to dial in not just conductive pathways of preferred resistance, for example, but complete machines, ready to charge and boot... with sensors, memory, displays, transmitters and receivers. This reality is much closer than I though just a week ago.
Where I'm most curious are advances in printing of energizable components... innovations in printed solar panels, for example, or passive inductive collectors.. or capacitors... the RepRap dream may soon be realized.
CodeMaven, Yea we were just discussing that those lasers are kinda useless, 'other than pointing stuff out at night, and maybe being a one person rave machine with some little mirrors or something ..lol .. but yea their dangerous. Erik was looking into laser cutters and came across some really promising stuff, we got sucked into all these ideas for more user level applications, but he agrees they are a little inaccessible to fit in a ultimaker ... for now.
liquidbuddha, Wow see! We knew it!, this fits right in with what Troy and Erik were talking about!
We both grew up with startrek on in the room, and I always knew we get there one day! SEE!! we started this thread knowing other people were ON to this, and the verse told us :geek: I agree these ideas will be realized, then when we have them, I can just say 'Computer, tea, earl grey, hot' ..LOL except myself I'll say: computer, juicy cheeseburger! .. and while you're at it, a new silk dress, and diamond necklace! ... but for now I'll settle for ABS pumps and the cool earings anja is making on Youmagine .. I'm gonna do some cool ones too!
Indeed this new industry seems to be changing every week now, talk about exciting! and now with the Ultimaker2 we are getting that'much closer... BTW, Utimaker, I bought my unit a month ago, can we get the heated bed?, I want to use the ABS I bought, but we don't want to build a bed, is it compatable with UM1? .. can I have a deal? :roll: teehee..
Anyway, This is awesome, now I have the whole familly reading about this stuff, my dad wants some little parts to fix stuff around the house, my mum wants some gardening things, even my cat wants a heated bed!, ..errr umm, I mean toys. :rolleyes:
BTW, Utimaker, I bought my unit a month ago, can we get the heated bed?, I want to use the ABS I bought, but we don't want to build a bed, is it compatable with UM1? .. can I have a deal? :roll: teehee..
You need to act fast if it was less than a month ago. I think there is some deal - certainly if you haven't received your UM1 you should be able to upgrade to a UM2. I know UM stopped shipping all UM1's for a week or so before the UM2 announcement to give people time to upgrade their order.
Contact them - they have some deals for people who "just" bought a UM1 but I forget the details.
have anybody read abt these http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/14/squink-lets-you-print-a-circuit-board-for-the-price-of-a-cup-of-coffee/?ncid=rss&utm_content=bufferc9f06&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
is it possible to modify ultimaker for the same ?
is it possible to modify ultimaker for the same ?
Well, here is their kickstarter page: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/botfactory/squink-the-personal-electronic-circuit-factory
And down towards the end, there is this image:
Printer looks familiar, head looks extensively modified and some kind of paper is being used as a print surface so...
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cyclone 0
There are a few sellers for conductive filament. The biggest drawback of course is that it
is extremely high resistance. Most have strange printing qualities that would make it difficult
to use in concert with existing plastics, much lower melting temp, higher extrusion pressure
that sort of thing.
Then of course you really would want to use this with dual printheads and that is still a very young
technology.
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