Focused microwaves allow 3D printers to fuse circuits onto almost anything

I'm not clear if their technique works for the junction of one metal trace onto something like a metal pin of an IC? Would heat conduct through to the rest of the pin, potentially damaging the surrounding tissue or whatever it's mounted atop? Did they study heating up highly conductive junctions and how well they can control how far the heat travels while still obtaining a good "weld"? I guess the idea might be they sort of "spot weld" the trace to the pin very quickly with high heat? I don't know, maybe instead of one "weld" they could do clusters of several very small ones at staggered time intervals to limit the maximum heat absorbed by surrounding material?

That's without even getting into adhesives, etc. to hold the components in place against those delicate materials before (and potentially after, depending on trace strength) they are soldered.

They say they built a circuit, but from what I can tell from my brief skim all they really did was lay down traces on exotic substrates, with the real circuitry connected to it but mounted somewhere else. I'm genuinely eager for someone to point out a counterexample.

Thanks!

But practical application would likely stick to more or less conventional boards (tiny ones for sure) and use those ink lines only for where it's needed. Unless perhaps there's an application where crossing over with simple fused layer printing allows something revolutionary from going 3D? But 2D boards are really, really cheap and multiple layers are already giving ever conceivable advantage 3D could give, outside of stuff like antenna geometries.

For one-off and prototyping, an integrated fused layer + pick&place + circuit fuser machine could be super attractive of course: basically bridging the gap between breadboard and production quality. But I really doubt that this device would be anywhere near hobby workshop tinkering range...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGZ0qpPN1uk

once one can make traces in 3D as part of a case/shell/frame/structure things get _very_ interesting --- consider that one electronics designer actually worked up a 3D CAD system:

https://dune3d.org/

just for making 3D printed enclosures:

>My primary use case for 3D CAD is designing 3D-printed enclosures for my electronics projects.

So, imagine what folks like that will make when they are able to 3D print a full circuit board as part of a structure, with components place/oriented in it in novel ways (heat dissipation? LEDs to indicate status?)....

Afaik there are a lot more high temp UV resins you can print with.

They can be placed manually or automated.

I can't imagine it is better than laser processes, but still impressive. =3

> We got bought by Formlabs in 2024

> Formlabs sells their own SLS printer for $25000

> Formlabs charges a license fee to be able to print with custom materials like Applied Science did [0]

ah, well that explains it.

0 - https://support.formlabs.com/s/article/Setting-up-Open-Mater...

The tech to make your own PCBs at home already exists, it just doesn't really make sense to spend weeks making inferior boards when you can order custom boards for pennies and have them at your doorstep in a bit over a week.