Adventures with solderless 3D printed circuits + conductive filament
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- I had in my possession some X3D conductive ABS. The question begged: Could I create a 3D printed PCB that didn’t use a soldering iron? Yes! Well, sort of..
I certainly learned a lot making this video but the conductive filament isn’t quite up to the task, based on my experiences and those I reviewed of others.
This filament was supplied to me free of charge by my filament sponsor X3D. It was my choice to make the video and all opinions expressed are my own.
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X3D conductive printing guide: www.x3d.com.au...
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Videos I referenced that are worth a watch:
Conductive 3D Printing Filament - Resistance/Power Test by GreatScott!: • Conductive 3D Printing...
Conductive filament - Can you 3D print electronics? by Datulab Tech: • Conductive filament - ...
3D Printed Projects - Working with Proto Pasta Conductive Filament! by DIY3DTech.com: • 3D Printed Projects - ...
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I’ve found it’s good for a stylus pen on iPhone. I made a video on it back in 2015. I also tried to make a circuit board but gave up as the surface conductivity is too low and overall conductivity is way to inconsistent for circuits. You’ve just confirmed the technology hasn’t advanced one bit.
theoretically could it be used to make a touch lamp? I have an idea but I don't have any of this kind of thing, so I can't test it out
I'd love to see a 3d printer build off between you, Angus, Joel, Tom, Stefan, Chris's Basement Chuck H, etc.. Everyone gets $1000 to build the "Best" printer they can from whatever they want. Then put them to the test of materials, tolerance, speed, quality etc...
I would love that too, that would be so cool.
This is an amazing idea, kinda like the Scrapyard Wars of 3d printing. Count me in as a viewer.
This is the content we need!
...and they have to build it by knitting it together with wool.
Interesting idea, but what is the definition of best? Is largest print volume best? Is fastest printing best? Is highest temperature printing best? Is ease of use best? Is best mechanical design best?
Sound more like resistive filament than conductive filament.
XD
It is the nature of trying to make plastic flow electricity. It's a miracle manufacturers can make it work this well at all.
Since this filament is conductive, you may be able to electroplate bright copper on to it.....there are some cheap kits with anode and solution available on eBay.
Do you know what is resistive filament? this one :) 3DXSTAT™ ESD-Safe PETG 3D FILAMENT
( Target surface resistance: 10^7 to 10^9 Ohm.)
It's the same thing, just a semantic change. Things that conduct have resistance. Things that have some resistance do conduct. They are the reciprocal of one another.
Fun fact: Any thing you print with that filament will become a pencil. Try writing with it!
Just watched this video over a year after its release and was very surprised to find myself mentioned. Most people don't even give credit when they straight up copy you, but you even give credit to your research! Cheers.
Thank you for showing us the full experiment even if the results were unfavorable!
As always Michael a very thorough well presented video! Thank you for taking the time to do these for us to learn from!
This video is hilarious and rekindles lulz of the original goals of the reprap project. Thanks! :)
This can be used as a signal circuit for something like a maze toy or an interactive puzzle.
Great idea
Great Video,
In my arsenal I have
QidiPrint Xmax
Snapmaker A350
Kobra 2 Max
I will be starting my adventure with conductive PLA, I will be using it as a ground bus printed into a retrofit housing for a display.
I'm glad you saved me some grief with this video.
Thanks for running this experiment! Very informative!
Well done video and extremely informative!! Thank you! I dare not say that conductive filament will not evolve but for now, it appears a CNC of a solid PCP board is the bast way to go for now. However, the use of actual wire is very intriguing.
I always admire people who have technical skills as fine as you do. This is kind of what tech companies like Nano Dimension are slowly but surely achieving on an industrial scale, isn't it?
Interesting. I just started 3D printing and I am already hooked. I fear it is a rabbit hole I will never get out of.
That happened to me 😂😂
You should have tried the LED without the resistor, since the filament itself has so much resistance.
Conductive filament is necessary to 3D print motors and generators amongst other things, so we'll need to develop better filaments in the future. But I have little faith in FDMs/V6s ability to print conductive materials. Maybe when tool changers come around someone will make a specialty ferromagnetic/conductive filament hotend that's able to get lower resistance, but doing it out of a v6 style hotend just isn't going to happen.
A toolchanger could have a soldering head, dispensing solder paste and heating it up. Or even use a laser for that purpose. Such things probably already exist somewhere.... Easier would be a plotter with conductive ink, which is slightly better than the conductive filament.
I shorted the leads of the resistor for the first test, made little difference. Too much resistance in the other components.
Tool changers are exciting, let's see where this technology is in five years.
Yes, I also have tried ferromagnetic filament, in hopes it would be useful for making motors, inductors, transformers, speaker magnets etc. Nope, the magnetic conductivity (permittivity) is very poor, not useful at all.
This filament might still be useful for something like embedding a capacitive sensor buttons. Though the conductivity is so poor i'm afraid it won't be useful even for that.
Don't forget, that we also need an extruder for redstone.
Awesome, thank you for your testing and provided information.
As always, great content and a pleasure to watch video.
Yesterday I made some Tests with printing pure solder with my Ender 3. And it kinda worked!!!
I mean I was able to print the first layer, but then my bowden tube filled with fluid solder...
Of course I used an old hotend for these Tests.
Im future I will experiment with different fanspeeds or even different fans to get the solder perfectly timed and being able to print multiple layers.
I think it would be cool to simply 3d print conductive materials
Edit: And of course I dont recommend to try this yourself, because you will probably ruin your hotend or even the whole printer
@Stereo Rainbow yes I think with an all metal hotend it should work
I was able to print lines and even some curves but sadly no areas, because the solder flew together and it became a mess.
But when You think about it it should be possible to print some PCBs or even some Basic eldctric devices like a Flashlight. With a Dual Extruder you could start by printing the framd, then print the eldctric wirimg with solder and the adding a LED and a battery. This would be so cool
I've been wondering about using a 3D printer to apply an etch-resist layer on a copper-clad board. I don't think it would have the resolution of a photoetched board, but it might be cheaper and easier, all things considered.
I really appreciate showing how the sausage is made. Seeing the failed experiments is highly elucidating.
Would be interesting to see how well this works when connected to a touch sensor input of an esp32 or capacitive touch sensor breakout boards, detecting when someone touches 3D printed objects.
When I got some conductive filament it was described as being used to get rid of static electricity. For example it would be used for a housing for the electronics because sometimes plastics can hold a static charge
Great work! And a nice solution for simpler designs.
Until I saw that the conductive filament really won't work, I was going to recommend trying conductive epoxy instead of the screw terminals. I was really hoping this was going to work. Oh well, thanks for trying.
you could pour the conductive epoxy into printed groves.
If you have enough filament left, have you tried to see if you can copper plate the parts to make them conductive ? There is a 'High Quality (and Safe) Copper Plating' instructable that goes over a simple method. I would 'hope' that this is conductive enough to plate.
While I do recognize the potential the filament has when used "raw", I "suspect" (actually, I know for sure) that it's best suited for electroplating, which is an inexpensive way to give the best results in a matter of minutes.
You should try it out, it won't disappoint you.
Dude! You're awesome. Thank you
Brilliant Job Michael. Based on this we will change the description of the filament to resistance filament rather than conductive. Thanks - X3D Team
Conductance is the reciprocal to resistance:
1/C = R
1/R = C
i don't know if there will be much difference in the sense of using different wording. But again, I don't know anything about sales.
Do you ship in in Europe?
I see what you did there... Turning failure into success. Clever
One of the things I've been meaning to look at with conductive filament is hooking it up to the capacitive touch pins on the ESP32 and making prints with touch buttons.
You've saved many people from thinking about this any further, and thank you for that!
It works if you don't use it. Love it!
You did some great testing, awesome work.
Thanks for this, I've been very curious about this type of filament!
Me: 1:30-Hmm conductive filament that you were able to make use of, interesting. 5-Okay what next, 11:50, okay so what did u do next?
12:40: Michael: Scrap everything just use wires
o_O
I have not been able to try this experiment yet with the conductive filament that I have but I wonder if you can copper plate the 3D filament after printing? There are many youtube videos that show how to copperplate and the materials are readily available.
Nice idea, I will investigate.
I like the idea of using the 3d printer to make canals and using wire, that would be a nice way to learn pcb design when you are starting out.
great video. when i watch you its like im doing engineering and experimenting. not just some dumb review
I was reading about a filament that uses a single continuous strand of carbon fiber. I wonder if that would solve the problem. I'll try and find the link.
Man, this Video saved me
I wanted to build a lamp with some LEDs, but a simple 3D printed frame and a wire wouldn't Work because i needed a stiff Connection without flexible wires, so my plan was to take a length of copper and embed it in epoxy
This is way easier
I've printed buttons to simulate physical gamepad for emulators running on Android phone and they worked. At the bottom I used cut off bits of cheap stylus pens and the top was conductive ABS supported with springs.
I was thinking in terms of ergonomic keyboards with concave key wells. I was disappointed with your results with the filament, but the idea of structurally-supported circuitry is terrific! Especially if your “wiring” is all just cut sheet metal, designed with all the right slots and joined maybe with solder. You'd have to make sure to engineer the *assembly* process, not just the finished product, but anything better than the rat's nest you usually get with boardless keyboards would be a success.
Thanks for testing this - I don't need to waste mybtime with this topic, at least for now ;)
Passed 150k subs, Micheal! Well done,mate. 🤘
I don't know much about electronics at all. I have found 1 use for this. If I want to split 1 wire into several like-size wires, I can make a board with a bunch of holes in it for a bunch of screw terminals. Much cleaner look than a bunch of wiring.
Also while it might be brittle, I have used PLA+ to protect it.
Haven't tested the item out to see how durable it is but it definitely works. If they could make a slightly flexible version of this it could be more useful.
What I would try is to print very narrow channels to end points between components. So sort of like printing wires.
This might be best using a two-nozzle printer so the other one can print the non-conductive base and the other fills the channels with conductive substance.
Excellent video!
Can't wait for that consumer grade conductive, printable graphene. Great workaround in the mean time. :)
Me too :)
I guess it's true; resistance is futile.. Interesting video!
You should be able to electroplate the slightly conductive parts with nickel/tin/copper to make them very conductive.
I like this idea. I've read about conductive plastics being used as a base for electroplating.
This could have applications outside of electronics. It could be possible to made a metal shell on 3D printed objects.
Thank you for giving a honest review, I was about to spend good money and try this out, but it seems problematic even in 2023
You can achieve better results by embossing your circuit in your design. After your print is done you simply smear graphite powder (lock dry lubricant) on the embossment then iron it with some baking paper in between. This way the graphite will be embedded in the embossment.
Super neat video!
In the 1980's we were injection moulding conductive polymers for wing mirror heaters in cars.
Also there is a 3d printer which feeds out threads of kevlar or carbon fiber under the PLA as it comes out of the nozzle and cuts it at the end. So using copper wire instead of kevlar threads makes 3d printed wires glued into any shape held together with the PLA. And therefore able to create wire crossings or multi layer boards....
yahhs! yo your studio looks like a rnd shop.. you have good ventilation i hope.. my father died from prolonged exposure to chemical fumes.. i see all your printers and immediately my head goes to.. "god i hope he vents" often to late to little the impact of industrial waste has on people. cheers/.
with this stuff you could create components like 3d printed variable resistors :), enclosures that have build in touch sensors for example...also quite interesting to know if stress on the material would have any electrical changes...
Great idea, perhaps I'll follow up in future.
I've been reading comments trying to find this suggestion.
I think conductive filament could make some interesting sensors.
You could have a bunch of separate patches on a robot and monitor these patches to see where the robot contacts other objects.
Following your difficulties with contact resistance, I started wondering if those critical points would benefit from a drop of nickel paste. or even silver paste. I speculate that it is not entirely a volume resistance issue, so anything that would improve the contacts (just like your washers) might be helping. On the other hand, I believe having seen somebody making an entire PCB on insulating material applying some conductive ink. Maybe it was even something used in making hybrid microcircuits or thin/thick film resistors - palladium comes to mind. Is using a stencil still 3-D printing?
Interesting idea, why not do a dual filament print? Put regular PLA or PETG down for the first few layers then put the conductive filament on top of that?
I wonder if you used less conductive material would it work better since it has a high internal resistance. If you say printed a flat base out of regular filament with screw holes and printed the conductive filament on top of it as if it were the copper lines in a normal pcb. Would it work?
Is the resistance high due to material interface or length of material used?
Dual input extruder would be interesting to mix a metal containing filament with this one at various percentages for different properties. Brittleness of material is less of a concern if able to print it inside a non-conductive material.
What about dual extrusion where PLA is your base and the conductive filament is the traces?
Very well done video. Consistent to what I expected based on previous readings on the master: resistance is too high. Even with pretty fat conductors. I like the idea to run wires into a regular PLA PCB, though!
If you were to use thinner parts, maybe trying to print the conductive filament on to a pla piece directly it may work better assuming you can get a good contact path thru-out the entire piece. Basic traces and such, but probably thicker than a normal pcb. I would try something like 2-3mm wide and thick to start, and see if you could force the component leads in with an iron.
I hadn't done this on my channel yet, but I saw similar results in my testing.
I just had a go with some conductive filament, very brittle even after drying it for 12 hours, feeding it through the bowden tube you could hear it breaking every few seconds then it got stuck.
I wonder if this is a situation where a modified inkjet printer would be more suitable.
I know there are methods for creating printed circuits that essentially amount to printing with non-standard inks. There's even examples of building the equivalent of integrated circuits this way, which would be amazing if it could be done at relatively low cost (even if those circuits are pretty underpowered compared to standard silicon)
of course, printers suitable to modifications like this are hard to come by.
And you'd need conductive ink and probably a lot of functional testing to ensure the ink is thick enough to conduct reliably.
Of course, if you can get conductive ink + N and P type semiconducting ink, plus some kind of insulator layer that can be printed on top... you could do some seriously amazing things with it...
Now THAT is a project I guess. Build a hobby grade integrated circuit printer...
awesome idea! i would love to see more tests of conductive 3d filaments!!
How well would this filament work in electroplating?
Until you can print with very low resistance and narrow trace width at a reasonable price point, this is just a nerd thing. As an engineer, I'm glad I saw this before I bother trying it.
I think this can be used for old keyboard carbon feets, for restoration - but also I think can be used for producing your own rfid tags...
Makeing channels for wires is actually an awesome Idea. Could even make that 2 Layers.
Hi, next time you measure relatively small resistances you might want to look into the four-wire-measurement-method. By just checking your resistance-meter you are mainly measuring the resistance of the test leads. But great video as always.
Thank you, I will check it out.
Signals that are on the order of single-digit microamps, and certainly nanoamps, could easily be printed that way as a single thin line-thickness dependent on the distance-however the power-hungry peripherals would require a different kind of handling; maybe metallic plating, as somebody here suggested, or some other solution.
looks good, lots of test required for this to take off.
I would suggest to take the resistance into account and just up the entry voltage. if you do some math and you'll probably arrive at 9 volts V-in. a pla part with flipped normal and a tiny85 embedded? yes that would be fun
I was really hoping to see what would happen if the conductive filament was loaded in a 3d pen. Could you draw out a functional circuit? I conclude from the video that that ohms per inch would be too high and the filament would be hard on the pen.
I wonder how useful the conductive material would be with a dual material extruder.
I'd also like to see this.
There are applications where this conductive filament could be used as a pressure or strain sensor. There are likely geometries which change in resistance as the material deforms.
@@ddegn That could also be interesting to see. I was only thinking of things like conductive traces in an otherwise solid pla part.
Why not extrude solder wire directly? Find some that's close to 1.75mm and the melting temp printers can handle. Silly idea or does this have merit?
Who needs a current limiting resistor when you have this stuff
I wonder if this would work better in vase mode to try and line up the carbon fiber
try it with the conductive parts much smaller like the width of the wire and print it in after building the non conductive base , its printed and even tho conductive electricity doesn't like to have a lot of bends. just a theory since the filament is still fairly new. the bends part is true at least with residential electrical codes and laws
Did you try something like Low Temp Solder? If This ABS Melts at 220-250ish, then maybe the low temp solder that melts around 180 could be a way to increase conductivity greatly. IDK if you could get the solder to stick to the abs or not, but maybe there is enough carbon it would stick to that? I just don't know. Perhaps you could electroplate the completed filament then solder to that? I'd really like to see you give that a go...
I would be very curious to know what commercial or novel use cases conductive filament is good for. I understand the POC here but aside from wanting to try this out is anyone at all aware of this being used to produce anything? I would love to see more projects that use it. Thanks again Michael another great video.
See my post above
Could actually still be usefull as a "PCB" where you could use the resistance of the filament as a substitute for resistors in the circuit. Maybe it could act as a decent higher load resister in it self?
At the point where it measured 100k ohms it is game over for most applications. Instead of this carbon strand filament one could try to 3d print the soldering wire from the roll (1:13) directly on a piece of cloth or wood? The melting point is well in range at least. And the caps for the video would be "How to turn your Ender 3 into a soldering station" ;-)
another great video. you may want to try using silver epoxy glue which is conductive. commonly used to fix things where an iron wouldn't work like a car window defroster.
I think an applications for this filament is where you need a mechanical part to be conductive. for example you could make an endstop where there is a conducive 3d printed piece on a moving part and when it comes in contact with two other conductive 3d printed parts it completes a circuit.
I did some tests with the conductive filament and yeah ... it has really high resistance.
Filament i used is the protopasta PLA, printed using the ultimaker.
I find that the patterns of the print does affect it's conductivity, Lines "zigzag" patterns on normal fills VS concentric infill pattern. With the concentric pattern, you can achieve a long continuous printed line from one point to the other, hence making the conductivity better
Also, with another test, i did heat up the print using a heat gun, and the resistance lowered as more of the printed plastic melted together
(Kilo-ohms to about 200-500 ohms) but the shape does deform/shrink
Some things that i did not test, but would like to, is to test if ironing helps with lowering the resistance, and that if there was a setting for ironing at each layer of the print, to try and fuse the plastic together.
From research from 3d printing using jetting, the conductivity of the Z direction will be worse than the XY direction. I think this is true with FDM as well, as the layers cool and would not form as good of a bond.
Hey man. Liking the vid. Just a tip for measuring low resistances: get some sort of vaping mod, they’re used to measuring low resistances with high precision from 0.08 to about 2 Ohms.
Thanks for sharing- I'm interested to know how well it electroplates. The best conductive paints are expensive, silver based, and use really nasty solvents.
brilliant!
I'm guessing manufacturers are or have been experimenting with metal infused filaments. I could see all kinds of problems with them, but the right formulation might do better than this. As the comment below mine states, this sounds like resistive filament. It's not too surprising, since carbon fiber is used in some resistive heating applications, such as electrically heated floors.
So based on the 100K resistance would we even expect it to work??
Hi, I also see GRAPHENE filament in stores, as thishas much higher conduction, that would be a good kandidate? Have you got experience with that? (or anybody else?) thank you for the great videos!
I see you hold the probes with your fingers, this causes measurement errors, you are measuring your resistance as well as the item you are trying to test. Hold one end and pin down the other on your bench.
He might have also pushed the part leads in so far in the 1st circuit that it shorted on the metal build plate.
Thanks for the tip. The bed has a PEX sheet o it so no touching of metal.
has the material improved in the last 3 years? i was hoping that i could make a wireless gadget with this.
@teachingtech to fix broken headphone port. I wonder if it os possible to print the part with this filament.
Hi...kow did you geen color lcd stock display? It is hardcto mod?
Maybe don't write it off too quickly. Perhaps it could be used to make capacitive switches, low temp heater elements, or like Defpom said em shielding. Wonder if using multimaterial you print the circuit on something non-conductive, then electroplate the X3D with copper? Silver plating that Benchy... xD
I like these ideas.
Time to geek out
It seems that 3D printing is not suitable for making decent PCBs. But they should be ideal for larger conductive elements like those used in motors. Good video.
the end of your videos remind me of the 90 cartoon outros.