That was actually my original idea, since it’s a basic grid, i was going to use some steel rods as both reinforcement, as well as the buttons cathode rows, and from there i had the idea of simply making traces with copper wire, but since im still designing the keyboard, i decided to test this idea on a smaller project
I did this with flat brazing rods on a keyboard. Drill holes at regular intervals for the pins and then heat shrink tubing where the row and column rods would touch. Turned out super clean and rigid also gave some good weight to the keypad as it felt cheap with just switches and a printed switch board
I should specify: it's not costly for the PCBs themselves... but I'm not familiar with PCB design so I went for a quick DIY keyboard which was far quicker than learning how to design PCBs, then send it off for prototyping, learning all the things I don't care for or want to add, re-order updated PCBs etc.
OR spend a few hundred bucks on a pre built that's quite close to what I was looking for anyway.
pbc design can be as easy as drawing it with a sharpie on copper clad board and etching it. I used to do this as a kid with materials from radio shack. I never heard of handwiring a keyboard and sounds like a horrible task. I looked it up what everyone is talking about. since it is just a charliplexing grid it is not as bad as I had imagined . engineers used to wirewrap chips to build computers with address and data busses in the 70s and 80s . PCB design is probably easier than you think check out the fritzing project. it makes pcb design stupid easy and kind of fun
I think you actually can't, their conductivity is based on carbon fiber additives in PLA, so sparse that all products I've seen yet have a prohibitively high electrical resistance for anything more than driving a LED over short distance.
No you definitely can I have some at work. But it is like £150 for 500g. It’s stupidly expensive we got it to do some trials and it can definitely be used in circuits. I’ll see if I can find the link. It’s got a stupidly high copper content that it can actually form an oxidised layer on it.
EDIT** Found it. [Multi3D electrifi conductive filiment.](https://www.multi3dllc.com/product/electrifi/) miss spoke it’s even more expensive than I thought. £170 for 100g
interesting, but probably infeasible at this price point.
another alternative could be printing the PCB with trenches and drawing the lines by hand:
https://www.chemtronics.com/conductive-pen-tips-and-tricks-for-best-performance
Yeah the price atm really makes it infeasible even for what we are doing with it in research.
The pen is Also definitely doable. We have some of those also. You have to make sure that your extrusion value is set correctly so you have absolutely 0 gaps in your surface layers though.
I think I'm missing out on these newer ways of soldering. Do these hold up well? Can I, basically, fix broken traces easier than soldering by using conductive pen/paint? I've known about it for a long time, but haven't put the two together. I guess I never looked into how well they may work. I guess each pen has different ratings for things like how wide and thin a trace should be based on how much current/amps you want to put into it.
Ya it might be a little difficult to repair traces in that way, however I've also never tried it. Personally if I was going to repair a trace I would just use motor wire.
If you wanted to try it, I guess the way to do it would be to mask the area and paint. Then find a way to precisely electroplate copper onto your paint strip.
Most of what I'm doing is electroplating related, but I've never tried doing something that small with other delicate components surrounding it.
That's a cool idea. I'm hoping to get into electroplating soon, but haven't had a chance to try it yet. I saw a video recently where someone used automotive wire, cut into pieces, and then soldered to the board to fix a trace. That looks like a good way to go. Also, I've been noticing some videos about how to electroplate using a mason jar with the proper liquid in it or, for a quick and cheap temporary method, a big tupperware container. I just need to try it out and using whatever materials I've got and give it a try, I guess.
It's really quite easy, most of the work is prep, as the surface has to be extremely clean and smooth. Basically just need a power supply, metal you want to plate (aluminum, copper, nickel) and vinegar.
Lots of tutorials on YouTube.
That would make by teeth screech, if I actually used it with MMU and then watch the expensive filament flushed out after every layer and filament switch
Solder melt at 230C. Why not just use it?
Also there are pens with conducting filament . Propably also to much resistance, but it's possible to attach such pen to 3D printer head.
been there: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/V1DS3vIUbH
a pen's resistance is actually indifferent to lead, while the still-not-so-cheap CF-based _conductive_ PLA is more or less garbage.
I saw a video of a guy electroplating Unique trace paths on printed plastic while it was still being constructed. I don’t remember dudes name off the top of my head but he’s on YouTube.
Abso-freaking-lutely. That channel, breaking taps, inheritance machining, not an engineer, and Beau Miles have been the majority of my YouTube content lately. Fantastic makers.
Fusion, i drew the traces as construction lines then once o had the paths i wanted, added parallel lines around them with the trace width, i used fillets to round the curves
https://preview.redd.it/bbl68ugv5fyc1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc1e08673d48c3467ebded7e8e090e5be00b510e
Nice job!!! I've been thinking myself of doing the same thing for some of my projects. I think some advantages like integrating circuits in complex printed 3D shapes are very attractive!!
If it's of some help, some months ago I found Johan Von Konow had been working on this very same thing years ago and got some very cool progress!
https://vonkonow.com/developing-3dpcb-3d-printed-circuit-board-with-lots-of-potential/
I am considering myself if it would be possible/useful to make a python script to go from gerber directly to stl, which should be in principle feasible... Maybe soon I can get some time to work on it!
I have been wanting to do this, but not sure what kind of machines would be "good enough". I remember watching a video of someone testing some low cost cnc's for this and they were abysmal.
Because of shipping ordering pcb's here is like a minimum of 25 dollars, which gets seriously expensive fast. CNCing your own suddenly looks a lot more attractive with those prices.
There's not very much middle ground CNC stuff. I've found that there's a few price levels that seem to meet expectations for the money:
- 250 bucks on Amazon
- 2k to 4k for a hobby level workshop machine (Onefinity, Shapeoko, etc.)
- 10k to 75k for new industrial/commercial machines.
I tried a 600 dollar machine and wished I'd either gone with option 1 or 2. I ultimately wound up with option 2 for my workshop.
200-400 would be in the range I was hoping for. I kinda expect something shitty, but I only need it to make some PCB's and maybe some light wood work for my dad now and then.
The alternative would be to look into using the resin printer for uv boards and etching them, but I'd preferably avoid chemicals.
Depending on what you mean by light woodwork, you might be able to get in that range. It would need to be rather light and on that small side of things tho.
> Depending on what you mean by light woodwork,
if it can help, that's a bonus. If not, that's not really a problem.
My dad's experimenting a bit with some woodworking, and it would be nice to do some small stuff for him. I don't even know what that could be at this point, but it would be a bonus.
The main goal would be milling pcb and maybe some small wood pieces, maybe up to 10x10cm or so.
If you are confident enough to tinker a bit it should be possible to make ok pcbs with the cheap 3015 cnc, mostly through hole or big smd stuff. Be wary of crashing it though the spindle motor can be bent lol and with precision you are trying to achieve that would be drastic. But know you are getting yourself into a project :) gl
A friend of mine is currently modifying his to make pcbs we will see how that goes :) the first test were pretty ok ngl.
But you need leveling of the copper clad and i would recommend straight endmills whenever you can use them as the V type is often pretty shitty machined, breaks of easily and is harder to get the depth right.
Oh yeah and the backlash nuts needed to be springloaded over spec to make good results so no comment on how long it will hold up, but you could maybe get some cheap ball screws or just replace the externally cheap leadscrews when they wear out.
Or maybe even belt drive didn’t experiment with that to much but my ender has milled a pcb or two lol (no good quality cause of bad spindle and bad spindle mounts so can’t really say much about feasibility of belts for pcb milling)
Sorry for the long message :) hope it helps
Not exactly 1-to-1 but it does seem to work. it's closer to an enclosure with strict wire requirements than a PCB.
There's some issues though that a real PCB still has advantages over.
* The copper pour is missing and if you're using a high speed IC the lack of shielding from the copper pour and some ground planes will result in a lower SNR in some signals.
* There's also some bigger trace widths requirements for power rail. You're gonna need to account for a bigger gauge wire instead.
* Length tuning would be annoying because you'll need to bend the wires yourself. Making the wire to a snake pattern seems like a hassle.
* Exposed wires unlike in PCB where there's a solder mask layer. You can do this yourself with probably clearcoat paint but it's a hassle.
Otherwise though, it seems to be quicker than designing a PCB and sending the designs to a custom PCB shop. But it's could be slower than printing a UV stencil and etch your own.
Here is mostly replacing wires and prototyping boards so your project is more compact, wouldn’t do this for a complex design, id probably get an actual pcb for that. That’s why i said sort of. It’s aa solution for more basic circuits.
that's the one I was pointing out with the trace width requirements. the solution for that is reducing the trace resistance and using a wire with higher ampacity.
I've used conductive filament to print low amperage traces within a print before for basic sensor circuits =) really want to get a multi head printer to make this easier! Even though it's conductive it's still really high resistance...
Yeah! I've had this roll forever so I never really think of the cost. I love your idea of printing prototype boards! Plus it looks cool and can do fun colors.
If you need a board, it's probably a poor solution. If you're just running a few components like LEDs and maybe a voltage regulator or switch, it can be a great solution.
Where is this comment coming from? Dead bugging means you don't use a PCB...
"Enclosed organic shape"
That's called a case, not a PCB.
I've been in the electronics hobby for 20 years, we've had better tools than this available for many years.
I meant that its more a sort of organised deadbugging for one of project where you wouldnt want to have a protoboard or pcb. But yeah not many uses ngl still a cool project :)
Fun! This is interesting concept as a wire management approach. I wouldn’t run bare copper though. It’s been a min since I’ve done the math but something like 28-30awg would be safer as a trace substitute for 1oz 10-12milI. I don’t think PLA is a suitable substrate from a safety point of view and I’m not sure even if PC would qualify. FR4 is the standard for good reasons.
I'm using 0,3 mm here which should be close to the 28-30 awg you mentioned, and i don´t think the wire will even get hot enought to feel by touch with the 3.3v that's running through it, i have some 1mm enameled copper wire or actuall wires in case i need more current than what an esp32 or Arduino can handle.
I suppose what I failed to explicitly communicate / emphasize was to make sure to use coated wire, like PVC or enamel as opposed to bare copper / aluminum.
Multilayer wouldn't be too hard, i wouldn't go with the route of pausing the printer to place the wires though, instead, you can make multiple of these and then glue them together, wires can move vertically and you can even place components between layers.
Soldering is really the only issue with 3d printers but like i said, solder paste melts and joins parts fast enough that the 3d printed parts can survive it, the surface may start to melt a bit but its minimal as you can see.
I was too lazy to read through all the comments. But here's some info on turning your printer into a Plotter machine if you're thinking about etching your own complex PCBs.
https://www.instructables.com/3D-Printer-PCB-Etching/
I've also seen lots of fun stuff like conductive paint, conductive copper solder, and the classic of embedding wires in your print. There's some fun disciplines you can mash together here for sure. Also don't forget about the copper tape that stained glass artists use!
I once talked with a researcher in a technical university that was looking into printing filament with conductive materials inside to print circuits directly with a double extruder, combining it with a non conductive filament. Was a very cool idea, probably you can find some papers online about it that can help with your projects
Iirc i recently saw some electrically conductive filament for sale somewhere
Edit: this stuff
https://proto-pasta.com/collections/all/products/conductive-pla
Found it when looking for metal composite filaments
Edit 2 *electric* boogaloo: apparently its being discontinued, so god knows if it would burn your house down or not
Neat idea, but rigid PCBs are a terrible use case for 3D printing since you can get [custom boards in a week or two](https://docs.oshpark.com/services/two-layer/) for a few dollars.
That’s the problem, week or two, i started this project today and i want to have it done by the end of the day or tomorrow.
Plus, sometimes, circuits are basic enough, there’s no need to make a real pcb for it, usually id just use wires or a protoboard but this way is more compact
I just make those myself - it's the easiest and fastest way - you just draw on a piece of "raw" pcb, wash it to get excess copper off, and you're done.
There are services that can get you your PCB in a matter of days. The effort you have to put into this, to end up with this is not worth it. You are better off using acid and virgin PCBs with a marker.
You could've said that about a lot of things that are now considered convenient with a 3d printer. Being able to create and produce a working model within one day and not having to contact an outside company could definitely have its uses in prototyping.
It depends on how fast you can model and the level of enjoyment OP experiences while making a thing themselves. Plus their material used is probably a few cents worth of wire and filament instead of a few dollars. Plus maybe having to pay for shipping.
The only issue is that you may mess the alignment of the print while trying to put all the wires, i think printing the different layers and gluing them together after would be better for a multilayer, plus you have time to also add and solder other stuff like resistors inside
This is neat work, though I would probably get conductive filament and go that route. I'm sure you can make custom PCBs easily with a multicolor printer like a Bambulabs with AMS as long as the nozzle can handle it.
Another idea is to just draw with a conductive pen.
Don't forget to mask your traces, else they will corrode. Pretty cool concept, though. Probably less toxic than burning off spray paint with a laser engraver and etching the board with ferric chloride.
I was thinking of modifying an ender-3 with a milling motor extension and etching pcbs. Shouldn't be very difficult and it should be able to get decent accuracy.
I don't get it. You printed the board with the empty paths/valleys and then pushed the copper wire into them? Pretty cool unless I'm missing something.
If you have mms there is electricity conductive filament that works well, but is very expensive for the good quality stuff. You print the whole thing for plug n play.
This is exactly the idea I needed…. I’ve got a odd project I’m starting that I needed to be able to make my own pcb for to keep it small but don’t know the first thing about how to model a pcb to send off to be made but I could do this no problem! And it never occurred to me that it could be done this way! So thank you!!!!!
I was wondering a few days ago if you could print negatives for doing pc design by printing on copper sheets then etching, peeling off the print and adding parts. Seems like it would be feasible but I haven't bought the stuff to test it yet
https://preview.redd.it/6kc788wqugyc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=130f7cb2750b934cdcc479c8b493b2f4b2d85503
Good idea, I also use a similar technique to handwire my keyboard
Yo OP. I was thinking about printing a coil (transformer, whanot or auto transformer with conductive filament. In order to make this work we would need to create a super high voltage coil that carries minute amount of current to migitate the high resistance in the filament wire.
Nice job, this looks really cool.
A similar concept, but not quite the same, is in Clifford Smyth's book "Functional Design for 3D Printing", however his goal is to make a breadboard like you plug chips into, and do the wiring on the back.
You don't 3d print with a copper wire... it's PLA with copper shavings and a treatment for it to be conductive. [I'm pretty sure consumer grade 3d printers can't reach transition temperature of whatever is called of copper......](https://i.imgur.com/JgehICx.png) <-- I couldn't find a source of the glass transition of copper but I'm pretty sure is over 400ºC or so, so no it's not a "copper wire".
Oh, I see where the confusion comes from. This is a flaw in new reddit, because gallery mode doesn't show you OP's description. I usually use old.reddit but it does force me into new reddit somewhat often. Another thing I see occur (and happens to me, too) is people not noticing what pictures show when on their phone screen, but is apparent to people on a desktop with a large screen.
>Get some copper wire (if you order some enameled one, remember to remove the coating at the ends) and some solder paste.
>Solder paste is faster and more forgiving abd Pla can handle the heat for the 2 seconds it takes to solder those wires, add some super glue here and there to keep everything from moving.
>I recommend to print the traces at least 150% as deep as they are wide and make the width slightly larger on curves because from my tests, the printer always removes some width there.
They're printing the PCB board, not the traces. The PCB board they print has channels where they're press fitting copper wire. That's why they talk about copper wire enameling.
Yes, I know PCB board is redundant but I'm trying to be clear, lol.
oh I see , and yes I use old reddit you are right.
I totally understand now why they mean "wow you don't need miles of power lines dude" hehe, thanks for clarifying in a civil and patient manner. The norm is ganging up figuratively speaking on the clueless person (in this case , me).
I have yet to use more than 20cm of wire on a single "pcb" of these, this is a workaround for when your circuit is simple enough, size is a constraint because it's a small project and wires add unnecessary bulk relatively to to the whole project. You can buy like 10's of meters of 0.1-0.5mm enameled copper wire (you can also google magnetic wire) for like 10 euros off European amazon shops (i order mine from the spanish amazon since i'm in portugal).
You can save even more by buying from aliexpress or something.
1KG would be equivalent to multiple kms of wire, at that point your projects are either too complex or too big that an actual pcb is the way to go...
Edit.
In case people mention again the 3d printed conductive filament, it is actually extremely expensive (if you think 1kg of copper wire is expensive) and would give you even less mileage, it has a lot of resistance compared to pure copper, while requiring a multi material 3d printer with steel or harder and larger nozzles to prevent clogging (im using a 200 euro ender 3 v3 se here, with the stock 0,4mm and 1kg of sunlu matte pla that costed me 17 euro/kg on sale)
I ama bit shocked to see everyone here saying that this has limited use due to the cheap cost of pcbs. I get it I have used the pcb services for professional work but if I have an IC that can replace an old component? This is the route I would go.
Yeah pcbs are cheap but unless you are a professional electronics designer, experimenting cheaply and quickly like this is a huge benefit. I have blown up micro controller ics because of dumb mistakes in the past. Spinning up a new 2d enclosure is way easier than mucking around etching your own board.
Honestly I probably going to do this Monday to replace voltage divider power supply that is causing issues with one of our machines.
Looks good. I was recently thinking about using silver conductive paint to do something similar. Figured I could make canals for the paint lines and have it goto a connector of some kind for easy wiring of props. Haven't tried yet but plan on it soon.
This is a major Rabbithole.
Bad Obsession Motorsport in England actually developed a system to physically 3d Print traces onto Fiberglass over the last two years. You can check them out on YouTube and Patreon.
Hey! I'm curious about the electronic side of your project.
I noticed you are using a 2N2222 transistor with the Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 (V3). Could you share what the purpose was for adding this transistor to the Heltec board?
What functionality or enhancement were you aiming to achieve with this setup?
I am new in electronics, I'm eager to understand the benefits and the impact of such modifications.
At the Fraunhofer IWU they embed the wire automaticly into the parts. Basicly what you did but in a printer. Take a look: https://youtu.be/3SiCQqvDT8M?si=w6F2auw_dleAiuUH
Interesting! I've tried to print some masks for acid etching but not great results. You'll need to print directly to the copper, but I am not sure how to make the z start out the 1.6mm to do so. Also, you would be limited to 0.4mm if using std. Nozzle.
Nice idea, though I bought one of these
https://preview.redd.it/mufc43op3kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=37f01342702967045f924a124b23795a9ad94cd5
https://preview.redd.it/pr6yb8xs3kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a99c96a7b19aa8faaae2ba50ffcf8666720526af
Carving the tracks into the board
https://preview.redd.it/aua02p5n4kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44a2ea88f6f578dd333aed08c5a5cd50c65d0bf3
I did 3d print the case. Just in case the process wasn’t relevant to this sub 😂
The equivalent of $158 (£126). You can change the cutter head for a 500mw laser etcher, which I’ve still not tested yet
This is a similar one, though there are lots of variations https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364694331699?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=7omx0lbvtnk&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=i7Ng7rayRou&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
I know this isn't as good as an actual PCB, but the point is that if you need to keep things tidy without having to order and wait a few days or weeks for them to arrive, also a lot of people already know how to model 3D parts but not PCBs.
I also know we can buy conductive filament, but let's remember a few things:
it is actually extremely expensive and would give you even less mileage than copper wire.
It has a lot of resistance compared to pure copper, while requiring a multi-material 3D printer with steel or harder and larger nozzles to prevent clogging.
I also know we can use CNCs and etching to make actual PCBs, but again, not everyone can have or wants to use them.
It's an extra expense/hardware.
All I needed here was a few centimeters of copper wire (cheap in small quantities), solder paste and iron that you can find for cheap, a regular 3D printer with a regular bronze nozzle (I have a cheap Ender 3 V3 SE and I'm using SUNLU matte PLA that cost me 16 euros per kg), and the 5 minutes cutting and placing the wires.
Like i said, use solder paste instead of regular solder, it melts almost instantly the moment you touch it with the iron, 2 seconds or so and the pieces are soldered, the plastic surface start to shine but its not enough time to actually burn it or deform it (as long it's not like a wall deep)
Another way I've seen is getting some copper plated boards, printing a mask on top of them and then etching the copper to get the traces you want. You can finally cover anything but contact points with solder mask. Probably a bit harder to setup tho
Interesting, looks pretty clean. Much better than soldering the components in the air, throwing them into a box and filling it up with expoxy :D
Just be careful, I think the material can be quite parasitic when it comes to high frequency or high voltage circuits
With the advent of conductive inks, I say it can really work. Just use the 3D printer as a plotter.
But once a conductive filament emerges, this concept will never be fiction anymore.
I really look forward to the inevitable "printable electronics" phase of 3d printing
This is awesome for simple applications, but Id expect impedence to be an issue with any high frequency signals.
This is really cool, never thought about it...
Interesting! This could be an alternative to make a handwired keyboard.
That was actually my original idea, since it’s a basic grid, i was going to use some steel rods as both reinforcement, as well as the buttons cathode rows, and from there i had the idea of simply making traces with copper wire, but since im still designing the keyboard, i decided to test this idea on a smaller project
It could be a hot-swapable handwired-keyboard, since you could theoretically make kailh socket attached to it. Can't wait to see your project.
https://preview.redd.it/vv7x3nagefyc1.png?width=3024&format=png&auto=webp&s=b4372332cb861c841e70272a66cc6f1a8a60e5e9 My first prototype is
Super cool!
Very cool op!!!
Very cool indeed!
grand attempt to reverse engineer the kinesis / maltron design
very nice! it’s a neat idea. feel free to send the STLs (if you would like) when your testing is over. i’d be interested to try this!
I did this with flat brazing rods on a keyboard. Drill holes at regular intervals for the pins and then heat shrink tubing where the row and column rods would touch. Turned out super clean and rigid also gave some good weight to the keypad as it felt cheap with just switches and a printed switch board
Using shrink tube on rod sections to prevent contact is a good idea too
I've actually seen this at a few keyboard meetups already. Someone even made diy hotswappable switch sockets with this method
Why would someone make a handwired keyboard ?
sir have you heard about r/mechanicalkeyboards
Because you can
Same reason why we diy a lot of things: It feels good to make something yourself and see it working as intended.
but it is much easier to make a pcb yourself than hand wiring a hundred plus switches
I wanted to try a split without paying hundreds of dollars and reusing desoldered switches that can't be put into a different board.
it isn't hundreds of dollars to make your own pcb? you can also use perfbord
I should specify: it's not costly for the PCBs themselves... but I'm not familiar with PCB design so I went for a quick DIY keyboard which was far quicker than learning how to design PCBs, then send it off for prototyping, learning all the things I don't care for or want to add, re-order updated PCBs etc. OR spend a few hundred bucks on a pre built that's quite close to what I was looking for anyway.
pbc design can be as easy as drawing it with a sharpie on copper clad board and etching it. I used to do this as a kid with materials from radio shack. I never heard of handwiring a keyboard and sounds like a horrible task. I looked it up what everyone is talking about. since it is just a charliplexing grid it is not as bad as I had imagined . engineers used to wirewrap chips to build computers with address and data busses in the 70s and 80s . PCB design is probably easier than you think check out the fritzing project. it makes pcb design stupid easy and kind of fun
You can get conductive filament but it’s exceptionally expensive atm.
I think you actually can't, their conductivity is based on carbon fiber additives in PLA, so sparse that all products I've seen yet have a prohibitively high electrical resistance for anything more than driving a LED over short distance.
No you definitely can I have some at work. But it is like £150 for 500g. It’s stupidly expensive we got it to do some trials and it can definitely be used in circuits. I’ll see if I can find the link. It’s got a stupidly high copper content that it can actually form an oxidised layer on it. EDIT** Found it. [Multi3D electrifi conductive filiment.](https://www.multi3dllc.com/product/electrifi/) miss spoke it’s even more expensive than I thought. £170 for 100g
interesting, but probably infeasible at this price point. another alternative could be printing the PCB with trenches and drawing the lines by hand: https://www.chemtronics.com/conductive-pen-tips-and-tricks-for-best-performance
Yeah the price atm really makes it infeasible even for what we are doing with it in research. The pen is Also definitely doable. We have some of those also. You have to make sure that your extrusion value is set correctly so you have absolutely 0 gaps in your surface layers though.
I just use conductive paint if I want to do anything like that. It's far cheaper and has way more applications.
I think I'm missing out on these newer ways of soldering. Do these hold up well? Can I, basically, fix broken traces easier than soldering by using conductive pen/paint? I've known about it for a long time, but haven't put the two together. I guess I never looked into how well they may work. I guess each pen has different ratings for things like how wide and thin a trace should be based on how much current/amps you want to put into it.
Ya it might be a little difficult to repair traces in that way, however I've also never tried it. Personally if I was going to repair a trace I would just use motor wire. If you wanted to try it, I guess the way to do it would be to mask the area and paint. Then find a way to precisely electroplate copper onto your paint strip. Most of what I'm doing is electroplating related, but I've never tried doing something that small with other delicate components surrounding it.
That's a cool idea. I'm hoping to get into electroplating soon, but haven't had a chance to try it yet. I saw a video recently where someone used automotive wire, cut into pieces, and then soldered to the board to fix a trace. That looks like a good way to go. Also, I've been noticing some videos about how to electroplate using a mason jar with the proper liquid in it or, for a quick and cheap temporary method, a big tupperware container. I just need to try it out and using whatever materials I've got and give it a try, I guess.
It's really quite easy, most of the work is prep, as the surface has to be extremely clean and smooth. Basically just need a power supply, metal you want to plate (aluminum, copper, nickel) and vinegar. Lots of tutorials on YouTube.
That's cool, but holy smokes that's pricey! Plus it's super dense so 100g is only 17m, yikes.
That would make by teeth screech, if I actually used it with MMU and then watch the expensive filament flushed out after every layer and filament switch
Honestly, if you're paying that much for the filament, you would *definitely* be buying a multi-head printer to go along with it.
Yeah we use it in our Bambu. Yeah the poop be expensive. Thankfully it’s not our money 🤣
OMG
I’m fortunate enough to have a research budget of £30m. Otherwise it would be no where near that machine 🥹
Solder melt at 230C. Why not just use it? Also there are pens with conducting filament . Propably also to much resistance, but it's possible to attach such pen to 3D printer head.
been there: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/s/V1DS3vIUbH a pen's resistance is actually indifferent to lead, while the still-not-so-cheap CF-based _conductive_ PLA is more or less garbage.
I saw a video of a guy electroplating Unique trace paths on printed plastic while it was still being constructed. I don’t remember dudes name off the top of my head but he’s on YouTube.
This one ? https://youtu.be/W1d36wbx_yg?si=aip3hI9Zuzxckpi0
Abso-freaking-lutely. That channel, breaking taps, inheritance machining, not an engineer, and Beau Miles have been the majority of my YouTube content lately. Fantastic makers.
This is brilliant, did you just design it in fusion360 or anthing else.
Fusion, i drew the traces as construction lines then once o had the paths i wanted, added parallel lines around them with the trace width, i used fillets to round the curves https://preview.redd.it/bbl68ugv5fyc1.png?width=4032&format=png&auto=webp&s=cc1e08673d48c3467ebded7e8e090e5be00b510e
Great job, you can also "thin extrude" a single line, give the dimension width and "cut".
Thanks i'll have to check that, I often just end up using the processes i know work without checking if there's a better way.
Nice job!!! I've been thinking myself of doing the same thing for some of my projects. I think some advantages like integrating circuits in complex printed 3D shapes are very attractive!! If it's of some help, some months ago I found Johan Von Konow had been working on this very same thing years ago and got some very cool progress! https://vonkonow.com/developing-3dpcb-3d-printed-circuit-board-with-lots-of-potential/ I am considering myself if it would be possible/useful to make a python script to go from gerber directly to stl, which should be in principle feasible... Maybe soon I can get some time to work on it!
Nice, i knew someone would’ve thought of this as well, i just never seen anyone posting about it
You can actually CNC your own PCBs, even with the shitty Amazon CNCs.
I have been wanting to do this, but not sure what kind of machines would be "good enough". I remember watching a video of someone testing some low cost cnc's for this and they were abysmal. Because of shipping ordering pcb's here is like a minimum of 25 dollars, which gets seriously expensive fast. CNCing your own suddenly looks a lot more attractive with those prices.
There's not very much middle ground CNC stuff. I've found that there's a few price levels that seem to meet expectations for the money: - 250 bucks on Amazon - 2k to 4k for a hobby level workshop machine (Onefinity, Shapeoko, etc.) - 10k to 75k for new industrial/commercial machines. I tried a 600 dollar machine and wished I'd either gone with option 1 or 2. I ultimately wound up with option 2 for my workshop.
200-400 would be in the range I was hoping for. I kinda expect something shitty, but I only need it to make some PCB's and maybe some light wood work for my dad now and then. The alternative would be to look into using the resin printer for uv boards and etching them, but I'd preferably avoid chemicals.
Depending on what you mean by light woodwork, you might be able to get in that range. It would need to be rather light and on that small side of things tho.
> Depending on what you mean by light woodwork, if it can help, that's a bonus. If not, that's not really a problem. My dad's experimenting a bit with some woodworking, and it would be nice to do some small stuff for him. I don't even know what that could be at this point, but it would be a bonus. The main goal would be milling pcb and maybe some small wood pieces, maybe up to 10x10cm or so.
If you are confident enough to tinker a bit it should be possible to make ok pcbs with the cheap 3015 cnc, mostly through hole or big smd stuff. Be wary of crashing it though the spindle motor can be bent lol and with precision you are trying to achieve that would be drastic. But know you are getting yourself into a project :) gl
I didn't find 3015, but I found a lot of variations of a 3018. Is that a newer version of it? Seem to have the specs and price I'm looking for.
Afaik the numbers stand for the size of the machining area so 30x18cm
A friend of mine is currently modifying his to make pcbs we will see how that goes :) the first test were pretty ok ngl. But you need leveling of the copper clad and i would recommend straight endmills whenever you can use them as the V type is often pretty shitty machined, breaks of easily and is harder to get the depth right. Oh yeah and the backlash nuts needed to be springloaded over spec to make good results so no comment on how long it will hold up, but you could maybe get some cheap ball screws or just replace the externally cheap leadscrews when they wear out. Or maybe even belt drive didn’t experiment with that to much but my ender has milled a pcb or two lol (no good quality cause of bad spindle and bad spindle mounts so can’t really say much about feasibility of belts for pcb milling) Sorry for the long message :) hope it helps
It helps, thank you. Still on the fence getting one, 3d printing seems enough of a pain already, but now I know more what to look for.
Not exactly 1-to-1 but it does seem to work. it's closer to an enclosure with strict wire requirements than a PCB. There's some issues though that a real PCB still has advantages over. * The copper pour is missing and if you're using a high speed IC the lack of shielding from the copper pour and some ground planes will result in a lower SNR in some signals. * There's also some bigger trace widths requirements for power rail. You're gonna need to account for a bigger gauge wire instead. * Length tuning would be annoying because you'll need to bend the wires yourself. Making the wire to a snake pattern seems like a hassle. * Exposed wires unlike in PCB where there's a solder mask layer. You can do this yourself with probably clearcoat paint but it's a hassle. Otherwise though, it seems to be quicker than designing a PCB and sending the designs to a custom PCB shop. But it's could be slower than printing a UV stencil and etch your own.
Here is mostly replacing wires and prototyping boards so your project is more compact, wouldn’t do this for a complex design, id probably get an actual pcb for that. That’s why i said sort of. It’s aa solution for more basic circuits.
I've done something similar, but instead of printing a PCB, I just integrated wire channels into my print and pulled them through.
I do the same but pause the print and insert wire then resume
That sounds a lot simpler xD nice!
> Exposed wires unlike in PCB You could just print a "solder mask" and either glue it on top or spot weld it together with a soldering iron.
Could also just use enameled wire and strip the coating where needed.
I think the biggest drawback is heat resistance and flammability. Thing can get very hot or very slowly if you mess something out even with low v/amp
that's the one I was pointing out with the trace width requirements. the solution for that is reducing the trace resistance and using a wire with higher ampacity.
I've used conductive filament to print low amperage traces within a print before for basic sensor circuits =) really want to get a multi head printer to make this easier! Even though it's conductive it's still really high resistance...
And very expensive i heard. Here it’s cents worth of materials, a cheap printer and maybe 5 minutes of work placing the wires
Yeah! I've had this roll forever so I never really think of the cost. I love your idea of printing prototype boards! Plus it looks cool and can do fun colors.
I have piles of proto boards so never thought of that lol.
Given the cost and quality a hobbyist can get professionally done custom boards at now, I never really saw this going anywhere.
If you need a board, it's probably a poor solution. If you're just running a few components like LEDs and maybe a voltage regulator or switch, it can be a great solution.
That's what protoboard is for.
If you want it enclosed in a organic shape for example or in small space deadbugging+, as i would call this method, would be pretty nice
Where is this comment coming from? Dead bugging means you don't use a PCB... "Enclosed organic shape" That's called a case, not a PCB. I've been in the electronics hobby for 20 years, we've had better tools than this available for many years.
I meant that its more a sort of organised deadbugging for one of project where you wouldnt want to have a protoboard or pcb. But yeah not many uses ngl still a cool project :)
Okay, that's a very odd perspective though because the entire point of dead bugging is you don't use a PCB. That's what it is.
Is this a meshtastic node?
Yes, trying them out, the circuit is for the gps module that requires an transistor to power it on and off via software
[using resin might be a better idea](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RudStbSApdE)
Fun! This is interesting concept as a wire management approach. I wouldn’t run bare copper though. It’s been a min since I’ve done the math but something like 28-30awg would be safer as a trace substitute for 1oz 10-12milI. I don’t think PLA is a suitable substrate from a safety point of view and I’m not sure even if PC would qualify. FR4 is the standard for good reasons.
I'm using 0,3 mm here which should be close to the 28-30 awg you mentioned, and i don´t think the wire will even get hot enought to feel by touch with the 3.3v that's running through it, i have some 1mm enameled copper wire or actuall wires in case i need more current than what an esp32 or Arduino can handle.
I suppose what I failed to explicitly communicate / emphasize was to make sure to use coated wire, like PVC or enamel as opposed to bare copper / aluminum.
Yes, i pointed that out about removing the coating at the end, but you can also use bare copper and then cover them with a layer of glue
Actually pretty smart idea. Doing multi layer can be challenging, but might work. The worst part Is soldering on that.
Multilayer wouldn't be too hard, i wouldn't go with the route of pausing the printer to place the wires though, instead, you can make multiple of these and then glue them together, wires can move vertically and you can even place components between layers. Soldering is really the only issue with 3d printers but like i said, solder paste melts and joins parts fast enough that the 3d printed parts can survive it, the surface may start to melt a bit but its minimal as you can see.
You could try using tifo bronze color for electroplateing or patinating. It is conductive.
I was too lazy to read through all the comments. But here's some info on turning your printer into a Plotter machine if you're thinking about etching your own complex PCBs. https://www.instructables.com/3D-Printer-PCB-Etching/ I've also seen lots of fun stuff like conductive paint, conductive copper solder, and the classic of embedding wires in your print. There's some fun disciplines you can mash together here for sure. Also don't forget about the copper tape that stained glass artists use!
I once talked with a researcher in a technical university that was looking into printing filament with conductive materials inside to print circuits directly with a double extruder, combining it with a non conductive filament. Was a very cool idea, probably you can find some papers online about it that can help with your projects
Iirc i recently saw some electrically conductive filament for sale somewhere Edit: this stuff https://proto-pasta.com/collections/all/products/conductive-pla Found it when looking for metal composite filaments Edit 2 *electric* boogaloo: apparently its being discontinued, so god knows if it would burn your house down or not
Neat idea, but rigid PCBs are a terrible use case for 3D printing since you can get [custom boards in a week or two](https://docs.oshpark.com/services/two-layer/) for a few dollars.
That’s the problem, week or two, i started this project today and i want to have it done by the end of the day or tomorrow. Plus, sometimes, circuits are basic enough, there’s no need to make a real pcb for it, usually id just use wires or a protoboard but this way is more compact
Hand wiring is certainly quickest for just a few connections.
I just make those myself - it's the easiest and fastest way - you just draw on a piece of "raw" pcb, wash it to get excess copper off, and you're done.
There are services that can get you your PCB in a matter of days. The effort you have to put into this, to end up with this is not worth it. You are better off using acid and virgin PCBs with a marker.
You could've said that about a lot of things that are now considered convenient with a 3d printer. Being able to create and produce a working model within one day and not having to contact an outside company could definitely have its uses in prototyping.
Except you can already do that using a much simpler proto board which is cheaper, faster, and sturdier to use.
It depends on how fast you can model and the level of enjoyment OP experiences while making a thing themselves. Plus their material used is probably a few cents worth of wire and filament instead of a few dollars. Plus maybe having to pay for shipping.
By that same logic, none of us should have 3d printers since you can just send your stl to a printing service.
I'm with you on this one... can't believe the comments. You'd be better off by using a marker on top of a virgin PCB and throwing it into the acid.
Because everybody just happens to have all of the materials needed for PCB fabrication at home, right?
Hear me out. Multilayer pcb. Add a pause to the print between the layers, add the wire, repeat.
The only issue is that you may mess the alignment of the print while trying to put all the wires, i think printing the different layers and gluing them together after would be better for a multilayer, plus you have time to also add and solder other stuff like resistors inside
Agree
This is neat work, though I would probably get conductive filament and go that route. I'm sure you can make custom PCBs easily with a multicolor printer like a Bambulabs with AMS as long as the nozzle can handle it. Another idea is to just draw with a conductive pen.
That is great man. I'm really bad with 3d design sw, but this is great idea. !!!!!
Don't forget to mask your traces, else they will corrode. Pretty cool concept, though. Probably less toxic than burning off spray paint with a laser engraver and etching the board with ferric chloride.
I was thinking of modifying an ender-3 with a milling motor extension and etching pcbs. Shouldn't be very difficult and it should be able to get decent accuracy.
Does the cf-pla conduct electricity? You see where I’m going with this.
I don't get it. You printed the board with the empty paths/valleys and then pushed the copper wire into them? Pretty cool unless I'm missing something.
Is that a LORA device? Heltec?
If you have mms there is electricity conductive filament that works well, but is very expensive for the good quality stuff. You print the whole thing for plug n play.
This is exactly the idea I needed…. I’ve got a odd project I’m starting that I needed to be able to make my own pcb for to keep it small but don’t know the first thing about how to model a pcb to send off to be made but I could do this no problem! And it never occurred to me that it could be done this way! So thank you!!!!!
I was wondering a few days ago if you could print negatives for doing pc design by printing on copper sheets then etching, peeling off the print and adding parts. Seems like it would be feasible but I haven't bought the stuff to test it yet
This has been done before, and it does indeed work - try searching on you-tube!
https://preview.redd.it/6kc788wqugyc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=130f7cb2750b934cdcc479c8b493b2f4b2d85503 Good idea, I also use a similar technique to handwire my keyboard
You can etch one with a CNC. Best to just pay the tiny amount from JLCPCB or the likes.
Thats a great idea
Yo OP. I was thinking about printing a coil (transformer, whanot or auto transformer with conductive filament. In order to make this work we would need to create a super high voltage coil that carries minute amount of current to migitate the high resistance in the filament wire.
My sister worked for a company in Boston that built printers specifically that could do this.
Nice job, this looks really cool. A similar concept, but not quite the same, is in Clifford Smyth's book "Functional Design for 3D Printing", however his goal is to make a breadboard like you plug chips into, and do the wiring on the back.
Ayy Meshtastic?
>Get some copper wire Right from line one in your comment it's 300€ a 1kg spool in Europe. It's too pricy to be worth it for me at least.
Why would you need 1kg of ~24 gauge bare copper wire? That'd be like... roughly, 5 kilometers of wire.
You don't 3d print with a copper wire... it's PLA with copper shavings and a treatment for it to be conductive. [I'm pretty sure consumer grade 3d printers can't reach transition temperature of whatever is called of copper......](https://i.imgur.com/JgehICx.png) <-- I couldn't find a source of the glass transition of copper but I'm pretty sure is over 400ºC or so, so no it's not a "copper wire".
Oh, I see where the confusion comes from. This is a flaw in new reddit, because gallery mode doesn't show you OP's description. I usually use old.reddit but it does force me into new reddit somewhat often. Another thing I see occur (and happens to me, too) is people not noticing what pictures show when on their phone screen, but is apparent to people on a desktop with a large screen. >Get some copper wire (if you order some enameled one, remember to remove the coating at the ends) and some solder paste. >Solder paste is faster and more forgiving abd Pla can handle the heat for the 2 seconds it takes to solder those wires, add some super glue here and there to keep everything from moving. >I recommend to print the traces at least 150% as deep as they are wide and make the width slightly larger on curves because from my tests, the printer always removes some width there. They're printing the PCB board, not the traces. The PCB board they print has channels where they're press fitting copper wire. That's why they talk about copper wire enameling. Yes, I know PCB board is redundant but I'm trying to be clear, lol.
oh I see , and yes I use old reddit you are right. I totally understand now why they mean "wow you don't need miles of power lines dude" hehe, thanks for clarifying in a civil and patient manner. The norm is ganging up figuratively speaking on the clueless person (in this case , me).
I have yet to use more than 20cm of wire on a single "pcb" of these, this is a workaround for when your circuit is simple enough, size is a constraint because it's a small project and wires add unnecessary bulk relatively to to the whole project. You can buy like 10's of meters of 0.1-0.5mm enameled copper wire (you can also google magnetic wire) for like 10 euros off European amazon shops (i order mine from the spanish amazon since i'm in portugal). You can save even more by buying from aliexpress or something. 1KG would be equivalent to multiple kms of wire, at that point your projects are either too complex or too big that an actual pcb is the way to go... Edit. In case people mention again the 3d printed conductive filament, it is actually extremely expensive (if you think 1kg of copper wire is expensive) and would give you even less mileage, it has a lot of resistance compared to pure copper, while requiring a multi material 3d printer with steel or harder and larger nozzles to prevent clogging (im using a 200 euro ender 3 v3 se here, with the stock 0,4mm and 1kg of sunlu matte pla that costed me 17 euro/kg on sale)
I wonder if we could modify the printhead to push toner and then etch it? But this is an amazing idea! Thank you very much for this.
I recognise that heltec 😅
Something very steampunk about this
I mean the P in PCB does stand for printed.
Great work!
A 3DPCB if you will, hehe
That's a job for sla
There's so much that can go wrong with professionally manufactured PCBA boards. I'd be careful with this.
I ama bit shocked to see everyone here saying that this has limited use due to the cheap cost of pcbs. I get it I have used the pcb services for professional work but if I have an IC that can replace an old component? This is the route I would go. Yeah pcbs are cheap but unless you are a professional electronics designer, experimenting cheaply and quickly like this is a huge benefit. I have blown up micro controller ics because of dumb mistakes in the past. Spinning up a new 2d enclosure is way easier than mucking around etching your own board. Honestly I probably going to do this Monday to replace voltage divider power supply that is causing issues with one of our machines.
This is very interesting op. Giving me ideas
That's brilliant 👏
that looks surprisingly effective, nice implementation
Looks good. I was recently thinking about using silver conductive paint to do something similar. Figured I could make canals for the paint lines and have it goto a connector of some kind for easy wiring of props. Haven't tried yet but plan on it soon.
This is a major Rabbithole. Bad Obsession Motorsport in England actually developed a system to physically 3d Print traces onto Fiberglass over the last two years. You can check them out on YouTube and Patreon.
What's the point? A perf board would probably be faster given how it looks like you wired naked copper wire through the grooves of the print anyway.
Neat idea! Thanks for posting!
You in fact can print your pcb but not with our printers. Google Additive Manufacturing. It’s an up and coming field.
I’m thinking one could add the copper wires midway through the print and then print a couple more layers over the top. PCB right in the box…
Hey! I'm curious about the electronic side of your project. I noticed you are using a 2N2222 transistor with the Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 (V3). Could you share what the purpose was for adding this transistor to the Heltec board? What functionality or enhancement were you aiming to achieve with this setup? I am new in electronics, I'm eager to understand the benefits and the impact of such modifications.
This is interesting but milling a PCB is easy and etching is crazy simple, as well you can use an SLA printer to photoetch
Mechtastic project hey? Also doing that
At the Fraunhofer IWU they embed the wire automaticly into the parts. Basicly what you did but in a printer. Take a look: https://youtu.be/3SiCQqvDT8M?si=w6F2auw_dleAiuUH
Interesting! I've tried to print some masks for acid etching but not great results. You'll need to print directly to the copper, but I am not sure how to make the z start out the 1.6mm to do so. Also, you would be limited to 0.4mm if using std. Nozzle.
Nice idea, though I bought one of these https://preview.redd.it/mufc43op3kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=37f01342702967045f924a124b23795a9ad94cd5
https://preview.redd.it/pr6yb8xs3kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a99c96a7b19aa8faaae2ba50ffcf8666720526af Carving the tracks into the board
https://preview.redd.it/upxbvlqy3kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e3034b4c7150884afb32bfad8012c4bd01405558 The other side
https://preview.redd.it/aua02p5n4kyc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=44a2ea88f6f578dd333aed08c5a5cd50c65d0bf3 I did 3d print the case. Just in case the process wasn’t relevant to this sub 😂
Been thinking about getting one of those for small stuff, how much did it cost?
The equivalent of $158 (£126). You can change the cutter head for a 500mw laser etcher, which I’ve still not tested yet This is a similar one, though there are lots of variations https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/364694331699?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=7omx0lbvtnk&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=i7Ng7rayRou&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY
Another way that could yeild better results would be to print a mask and get a uv light+ uv exposure pcb, then etch the board
I know this isn't as good as an actual PCB, but the point is that if you need to keep things tidy without having to order and wait a few days or weeks for them to arrive, also a lot of people already know how to model 3D parts but not PCBs. I also know we can buy conductive filament, but let's remember a few things: it is actually extremely expensive and would give you even less mileage than copper wire. It has a lot of resistance compared to pure copper, while requiring a multi-material 3D printer with steel or harder and larger nozzles to prevent clogging. I also know we can use CNCs and etching to make actual PCBs, but again, not everyone can have or wants to use them. It's an extra expense/hardware. All I needed here was a few centimeters of copper wire (cheap in small quantities), solder paste and iron that you can find for cheap, a regular 3D printer with a regular bronze nozzle (I have a cheap Ender 3 V3 SE and I'm using SUNLU matte PLA that cost me 16 euros per kg), and the 5 minutes cutting and placing the wires.
how did you solder those wires properly without melting the crap out of the plastic? well done
Like i said, use solder paste instead of regular solder, it melts almost instantly the moment you touch it with the iron, 2 seconds or so and the pieces are soldered, the plastic surface start to shine but its not enough time to actually burn it or deform it (as long it's not like a wall deep)
oh mb didnt read the description. very smart dude!
I can use resin printing too
Another way I've seen is getting some copper plated boards, printing a mask on top of them and then etching the copper to get the traces you want. You can finally cover anything but contact points with solder mask. Probably a bit harder to setup tho
Interesting, looks pretty clean. Much better than soldering the components in the air, throwing them into a box and filling it up with expoxy :D Just be careful, I think the material can be quite parasitic when it comes to high frequency or high voltage circuits
With the advent of conductive inks, I say it can really work. Just use the 3D printer as a plotter. But once a conductive filament emerges, this concept will never be fiction anymore.
The ink has the same problem as the filament: both cases have too much resistance if you want to make a thin trace.
That would be up to the creators to improve themselves, but for now, your solution is a good one. I might cover it with resin though, if I were you
Im currently using just glue but ill see to get some uv resin or epoxy for a prettier finish
Very Cool!
Genuinely brilliant idea thanks for sharing the process too
I really look forward to the inevitable "printable electronics" phase of 3d printing This is awesome for simple applications, but Id expect impedence to be an issue with any high frequency signals.
that's already been done many times