Did you see strange parts video about this 3d printer? what is your experience? he had a lot of trouble and in the end said he does not think this printer should be sold as soon as the company wants (iirc)
I just watched it. I can honestly say that I've never had an auger jam, never had any problems with the sd card, and the only time a print failed is when i added 10% chromite catalyst, to test the limits. I've printed a total of 6000 layers and used almost 10 liters of nylon powder. The 3d-printed sifting tub and related parts are not strong enough to be shipped in the final product, and i told Micronics this. I generally don't make product review videos, but i also didn't feel the need to talk about the printer since it just worked so uneventfully. I don't doubt Scotty had problems with his printer, and I think this uncovers a different problem: Micronics should have just sent him another build chamber after hearing about the auger problem. They could have assumed it was damaged in shipping, and given Scotty a fresh second chance with a thoroughly tested replacement. Micronics is a very young company (bootstrapped, not venture backed), and are going to be learning the ins and outs of customer service and product development. They are also a very small company, and do all of the manufacturing domestically in their own shop, which is quite unusual for a product like this. I admit that I want them to succeed because I like their story and the printer, but do not have a financial stake. Overall, i think Scotty just got a lemon since these units are handbuilt, and further problems could have been avoided with more insight into customer service.
@@jksjrgfpsjgrKickstarter wants a slice though, and not sure if the contract requires you to sell exclusively through them for the project brought to market that way. This company may have felt going that route compromised some core company value. Maybe they feel they want to get the product deficiencies ironed out before kick-starting it. There just is no way to know for sure. People make decisions for all sorts of reasons. So without knowing those reasons it's not fair to say that they should do it the way you would do it
@@zsigmondkara I think the patent rules require that there no "prior art" published. By publishing this video, Ben is making the idea un-patentable, which ensures that everyone can take advantage of the idea should it turn out to be useful.
@@helgew9008 US patent law 35 U.S.C. Section 102 has a requirement for novelty ie the invention must not already been known to the public (prior art). However there are exceptions, it appears the inventor essentially has a one year grace period to file for a patent. Ben should be able file this if he wished but I reckon he would rather have it available to everyone.
Dude holy shit. I spent like 6 months trying to come up with an electroless copper recipe because I encountered the same issues of non-specificity on all the information and eventually gave up after smashing my head against the wall with so many failures. You are my hero for posting this. I cant wait to give it a go again. Thank you thank you thank you!
Considering that the copper chromite needs to be activated by an pulsed laser, I'm not sure this would work for a dipped part. Unless I missed something?
@@skypatrol716 My application will use a different catalyst, nothing to do with circuit boards or laser sintered parts. I was just struggling with making a general electroless copper bath for doing a proof of concept experiment. My understanding is that he wants his catalyst to be inactive, until it gets hit with the laser pulses so that you don't end up with catalyst all over the part plating copper everywhere.
The only one that I'm gonna see, because I know for sure that it's gonna be the best of all. I wish I could ban all the Linux channels from my feed to not see his and his team disgusting faces.
@@Ismsanmar actually I think Strange Parts’ second channel (Stranger Parts) had the best video on this machine, as far as actual product reviews go, of the 4-5 I ended up watching lol. I think this video is as much about the actual project as it is about the machine used to make it.
A couple of points about the dichroic mirror to make your life easier: -reflect the shorter wavelength and transmit the longer one (this should be already the default for your set-up) -if possible (or economically viable), try to find a 1064 Nd:YAG laser for the activation: it will be hard to find a mirror able to split 447nm from 532nm(I guess that's your green laser) and sustain the two lasers power. Most of the dichroic mirrors on the market are designed for fluorescent microscopy. -if possible, use polarised light: p for the one to be reflected, s for the one to be transmitted -remember to add an antireflective coating on the back of the mirror, or you will start carving the side of your printer Lastly, a plate mirror may introduce beam deviations and a tilt in the focal plane of the activation laser; on the other hand, a cube beamsplitter may interfere with the calibration of the printer laset.
Nice! As for printing on 3D surfaces, you might want to look into "aerosol jet printing". This allows the printing on any kind of curved surface with fairly high resolution. BTW, the printing of internal conductive traces is well known in ceramic part manufacture where they generally use silver/ceramic mixtures to create the conductive traces. These parts are then sintered in vacuum. Using this method you can even print passive parts like inductors, resistors and capacitors inside the ceramic.
In high powered ion lasers, the cavity rings are soldered inside an alumina tube; the tubes can be well over a metre long. The soldering is done by sintering a silver loaded ring inside the tube where each cavity ring will sit, then the whole assembly is placed in a furnace to solder it. I recently dismantled a damaged tube assembly and it contained around 30 cavity rings in the tube.
@@clonkex The traces at the very least have to run along the inside of some topological hole (e,g, tube) in the printed shape which is connected to the volume of plating fluid. Can't expect to make traces anywhere the fluid can't reach.
"I'm a mad scientist and my money is green" should be an acceptable answer when queried by a sales rep. Also acceptable are "because I think it's neat" and "what are you, a cop?"
@@spankyjeffro5320 it's pretty telling if you don't understand that "ask for pricing" flexes based on how much your organization appears to have money. sure you can wrap it around as being necessary for knowing what the support costs will be and if the client understands how much running the device will cost and so forth, but ultimately it really is just about gauging how much their tender offer could have on it, relatedly you should make them and someone else compete for the contract, not act like you NEED their product because you know what happens with the pricing then..
@@HigherOriginsThe issue is that companies producing such specific devices can produce only so many devices. They have to consider for weirdos buying due to it being neat and doing nothing significant with it. Logically they want to sell to customers who would make an impact so more people would want the device which might result in more adoption which would result in more production etc. Our Ben Krasnow here is a person who such a company would just send the device to without even asking money for it. Unfortunately this approach applies to every aspect of limited availability "thing" such as specific schools or specific products etc. If you're a genius, the school would be like "please come for free, we'll give you the best room" etc. It's a limited availability issue. It's not that Ben is a genius and you're not ;-)
I used to run a Shipley 3000 PTH line, and we were adding a 500-1000ml of formaldehyde to the electroless (150 litre) bath every 3-4 hours to keep the plating thickness uniform throughout a production day.
I was working on 3D printed electronics in my phd. At the begining I had similar idea that you presented in 16:20, but my problem was achieving copper in the whole sintered layer. Finally I ended up with FDM and precision dispensing with laser curing of MOD ink, which composition I developed myself.
Dude, if you could patent that idea of using a dichroic mirror to activate the catalyst as it prints, I bet you'd make a small fortune! You'd be a thousandaire in no time!
With that fancy dual laser setup you can even print the pads and stuff for components recessed, so you can more easily locate them for easier soldering, and also more easily pot everything in place to have a totally flat PCB with multiple planar layers, basically inlaying SMC's, really good for vibration damping because your whole board is monolithic.
I'm just interested in science in general and find this man to be an utter hero despite the world of intellectual gatekeeping around. A genius that needs to be recognized. Thanks for amazing videos over the years!
Sounds incredible. I bet microwave engineers would love the ability to put conductive surfaces arbitrarily throughout 3D space, feels like another metamaterials video is just around the corner.
I've tried to find a working electroless copper plating solution recipe before without like. Tried this today and I accidentally copper costed my thermocouple! I'm excited to have a working solution
YT is weirdly interesting place. Not sure how did I ended up here, because this is not really field of my interests, but I found it fascinating. Not just the scientific part of it, but also the passion and creativity. People really have extremely wide range of hobbies. :)
If you could 3D print the traces layer by layer, you could make your own tranformers to any ratio, and even motors. You don't actually need permenant magnets for motors, you can absolutely use electromagnets for stator and rotor, it results in a really powerful motor actually...
He's not printing the layers, just an activating surface which copper plates to. So where copper is wanted fluid must have access. Impressive all the same.
@@kenmercer2721 He said himself he could activate it layer by layer towards the end which surprised me. I assume he's just putting a hollow cavity though, either way, it could still work. We print motor windings on transformers on 2D PCBs today anyway, think of what you could do with 5 or 6 of those with just some cavities so that the doping could still work.
This is a crazy cool technique that basically lets you do dual density parts and create electrical paths between them for creating wearables it basically means that you have a 3D printer but double and I think that's going to create some really interesting part
I came across a similar problem of a lack of specific information when building a zinc plating setup. It's not quite as finicky but getting good information was really difficult. I have scanned through quite a lot of available studies, footnotes, took notes from YT videos etc and even stumbled across a good book from 1900 (exact year) that helped me piece together a suitable solution. Turns out that the companies (doing electroplating) guard their exact mixture of bath, current and temperature fairly closely.
With regards to your final point about "who would want to use this", I work in testing in consumer product R&D and the ability to integrate sensors, control, and wiring directly into the weird 3D printed jigs and prototypes I'm provided by various project teams would be a game changer. At the very least it would cut down on the wire and kapton spaghetti that everything seems to turn into the moment you start to assemble it.
Yes! 3d-printed parts with embedded circuits is something I have been dreaming about since I started my EE in undergad (over 10 years ago). The ability to 3d print some mechanical structure with circuits designed into the part opens up so many possibilities in robototics - which is what first got me thinking on this topic - but I bet there are a lot of applications that haven't even been dreamt of yet. Thank you so much for you content! I love your videos.
As usual, what Ben manages to achieve is amazing. These Micronics SLS printers look like they'll turn into a very good product, but I'd have been impressed if the video was just that he'd worked out DIY electroless copper plating, as someone who has wished he could do it before now. A more detailed video showing exactly how to do DIY electroless copper plating would be very nice! The fact that before anyone even has a Micronics SLS printer via the Kickstarter, Ben has already worked out how to hack one to make it print 3d circuit boards within prints is awesome.
I feel like the failure rate will be astronomical if they are used in a structural way. A big advantage of having a separate PCB is the mechanical de-coupling from the structure so that stresses do not affect the traces as much.
You could mechanically decouple in this scenario too.I don't know if its possible to do print in place joints with SLS but you can make separate parts that snap together in some way.
I was a chrome plater. No one will help you learn. If you read the published manuals they just describe the process, little else. We carry our secrets to the grave. Congratulations, you are now one of us.
I love the idea of wire harness/circut as part of the structure of an object. Car and ebikes come to mind as a super useful place for this, where aero dynamic, weight, aesthetic and manufacturing constraints really limit what can be done!
An cool idea with the integrated pulsed laser inside the Micronics would be to do multilayer boards. You could make hollow "arteries" to pump the copper liquid through for the copper deposit on the activated layer. This project is so cool!
It was a pleasure speaking to you at open sauce. My suggestion to explore further and achieve 3d conductive paths on a ceramic medium would be a checkmate for diy pcbs. Imagine a fully routed qfp 44 MC the size of a poker chip! Show us the way Mr. Wizard!
That dichroic mirror idea sounds AWESOME! Think of it as the Bambu Lab Automatic Material System - an add-on that will improve the capabilities of your printer. It'd need software support, but that could be a really awesome, albeit niche, addition to the printer, and move it into a realm that no-one else has gone.
I think this would be amazing for printing prosthetics, if you need to pick up electrical signals from where the prosthetic mounts to a location where a motor connects with signal processing build right in, or something like that.
In my academic experience I have noticed that many papers are quite similar to the previously published ones with slight modifications. The problem that GPT helped you solve probably was published in some of the first (oldest) publication on the subject and after that was dropped as considered "common" knowledge in this specific field of science. This conclusion is also based on reading a considerable number of science publications from the late 1800 and early 1900.
I think that’s right. When making up “physiological salines”, I always add weighed solid compounds (salts, glucose, taurine etc.) to distilled water and pH the (almost) final mixture with NaOH and HCl solutions. The exception is adding Ca which is done by adding CaCl2 solution slowly into stirred or bubbled solution: if you added solid or too quickly, calcium salts (phosphates) can precipitate out.
It's incredible how patents hinder progress across all areas. In the case of 3D printers, the delay was also because there were closed patents that were renewed for decades, until the companies eventually gave up as they couldn't find a viable business model. Once those patents were released, homemade 3D printers began to emerge worldwide. I didn't know that even chemical formulas were patented ... basically, we're in a dark age where large monopolies have appropriated all knowledge and technological development. I had proposed developing a system of Cooperative Patents, along the lines of GPL licenses and open-source software, at a university in Argentina. But I didn't receive any support. On the internet, I saw that there's another person (Frederik Questioner) who tried to propose something similar with the Open Patent Office, but it didn't gain much traction either. Excellent video sharing your insights.
@@KallePihlajasaari What do you mean by 'support the initiative'? And what things couldn't you find on Google? Was it about Frederik Questioner or about my proposal?
@@jonidimo I am in favour of placing as many 'patents' as possible into the public domain. Specifically I would like to see unused patents be easier to licence or forced into the public domain. I would also like patents from companies that become insolvent or close down move into the public domain. Having a national patent pool that provides free or very cheap access to patents from any academic work or the above groups would increase the chance of small startups getting started and the more small business we have the less globalist monopolies we have. One provides resilience the other slavery. I think I went looking for Frederic because you mentioned him. However you are just a random userid so there is no way to find what you have been working on so no point in spending too much time guessing.
I'm always impressed with curved circuit board manufacturer. I have a 900R monitor and am using a Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. I didn't realize antennas were created in this form inside electronics though. And yeah, we all have used LLMs for something technical that seems astounding.
I think that we all hate the circuit boards that are covered in epoxy or something similar and then it is impossible to see what is wrong with the circuits. Just imagine what could be achieved with such a technology. You are a real evil genius. But to be honest that is really impressive and it can surely find a really useful application.
The brief tangent about chat GPT is something I've encountered before from asking language models questions about my projects. Even if I know pretty well what I'm doing, the way you can get it to break down and explain individual steps and their purpose has helped me learn new things that weren't immediately apparent on numerous occasions. great video as always!
Ganz herzlichen Dank, dass Sie nach langer Zeit wieder ein neues Video gemacht haben! :) Mit "SLS" hatte ich schon vor weit über 20 Jahren beruflich zu tun, dabei habe ich mich etwas in den "3D-Druck" verliebt. :) Die im Video vorgestellte Technologie ist sehr interessant! Beste Grüße aus Deutschland :)
Now you can print a Luneburg lens for radar collimation. You could also print radar wave guides and feed horns. You could also print bifilar coils with exact lengths so that it is the perfect tuned tank of inductive and capacitive value for a specific frequency.
Back in 2010 I had been messing with a bunch of .5 mm LED lights and trying to get the soldering, wires and all the parts to be small and customizable enough to meet my needs. Maybe after seeing this some of the steps you are doing will make this project doable again.
As an electronics engineer, I'm really looking forward to technology enabling fully 3D PCB. This will completely change the way traces are laid out and will make designing electronics so much more fun!
One thing to consider (other than chatGPT/LLMs) when optimizing experimental variables (such as your electroless plating solution) is using some kind of DoE (Design of Experiments) software. Although it probably wouldn't solve your problem here (since the order of addition was the important factor), it can be really useful for optimizations. Typically the software will suggest some different "factor levels" (or whatever it's called) to test, then you can enter your results, and it will suggest new improved conditions which you can test. It may require quite a few iterations, though, depending on the use case.
Really enjoyed watching this. I love how you clearly identified and explained the major issues you encountered. One thing i didnt understand is how you can plate an internal trace even if you activate it with a pulsed laser during printing.
Wow, I just watched a really helpful video about transistor switching circuits from 11 years ago. I was curious if you're still around, and I'm glad you are!
This is fascinating concept, Ben. What you're describing is a way to build structural components with inbuilt wires and circuitry, thus building parts for a robot, say, that are multifunctional. Mind blown!
This video made want an SLS printer more than any normal review. I think you are on to an incredibly useful technique we will see a lot in the future especially when it comes to failure detection/prevention such as formation of cracks (or maybe even strain - at least over bigger surfaces)! Either as a continuity measurement or via monitoring the resistivity!
That tangent at the end... With good enough resolution/small enough layer height on that speculative machine you could print multi-layered PCB in any shape, which would absolutely be revolutionary.
The lasers only activates the catalyst, it still needs to be exposed to the plating liquid but can be under overhangs or on complex wrap around and inside profiles.
An easy way to find focus is to let the reflected light scatter onto a light coloured surface; you will see a pattern of laser speckle which is an excellent indicator of focus, when the spot is well focussed, the pattern will become much coarser.
Super Fascinating as always. Sizzle focusing. That was some bowing with the hot air gun. 1n5711, what a great circuit. If only I was in a startup instead of an overgrown elephant of a tech company where security and H&S crush inovation this is just the channel to find those techniques that really work. Inspiring. Much appreciated Ben.
The end pretty much echoed my sentiment at the beginning, while I can't really think of anything to use this for right now I feel like if the capability was easily available people would definitely find all kinds of cool uses for it
Incredibly cool and interesting stuff! I was not expecting to see how strong those traces were bonded to the substrate. Although, I guess I shouldn't be surprised since it's basically fused directly into it.
You Sir are impressive, I would recommend that you reach out to the company that gave you the tool that you’re working with in the video. I believe they would sponsor all of your needs in attempting the experimental idea you shared towards the end of the video. They as a company would find lucrative use for what you are freely sharing, still share it but have them provide everything you need in order to vet out the operational possibility and issues as you work through devising the final parts. Very impressive
This idea of printing the circuitry within the structural parts was one of the fundamental ideas behind a 100% reprap machine, or a Von Neumann device. I'm very interested to see more.
You can vary the distance between the ball lens and the collimating optic to change your focal distance. For concave surfaces make the focal distance about the same as the mean radius of curvature.
I think there is good use to print parts with electronic circuits on them. From antennas integrated into cases to miniaturization by just getting rid of a pcb entirely and integrate everything into a case. However, for mass production we also need a plastic that can cope with the heat of smd soldering.
For light the FFT of the the currents across the emitting aperture perpendicular to the plane of interest is the pattern. So large span small angle, small span large angle. | Being able to make coated hollow structures would be amazing for RF filters.
Your videos are, without question, some of the best around. Regardless topic, subject, genre or target demographics. If you haven’t heard of this, don’t know how that would be, a nice gentleman released an open source SLS 3D printer. His project is called SLS4All. I thought that would be an awesome way of realizing your dichroic mirror idea without having to do a ground up design. I’ve been wanting to launch my channel with a project that kind of stands out and the SLS4All build is what I’m going to attempt. Because I want to see this project succeed, I hope content creators with the resources and experience, like yourself, take on the Sls4All project too. And , like I said, it would be a great way to integrate your 3D copper trace idea. Thanks for your time- Jason Burchell
Fantastic as always Ben! I've had really bad experiences with chatgpt and technical questions (fea solver cards for example), so be careful! LLMs seen to be super confident even when they are blatantly wrong. Keep up the amazing projects!
Did you see strange parts video about this 3d printer? what is your experience? he had a lot of trouble and in the end said he does not think this printer should be sold as soon as the company wants (iirc)
I just watched it. I can honestly say that I've never had an auger jam, never had any problems with the sd card, and the only time a print failed is when i added 10% chromite catalyst, to test the limits. I've printed a total of 6000 layers and used almost 10 liters of nylon powder. The 3d-printed sifting tub and related parts are not strong enough to be shipped in the final product, and i told Micronics this. I generally don't make product review videos, but i also didn't feel the need to talk about the printer since it just worked so uneventfully. I don't doubt Scotty had problems with his printer, and I think this uncovers a different problem: Micronics should have just sent him another build chamber after hearing about the auger problem. They could have assumed it was damaged in shipping, and given Scotty a fresh second chance with a thoroughly tested replacement. Micronics is a very young company (bootstrapped, not venture backed), and are going to be learning the ins and outs of customer service and product development. They are also a very small company, and do all of the manufacturing domestically in their own shop, which is quite unusual for a product like this. I admit that I want them to succeed because I like their story and the printer, but do not have a financial stake. Overall, i think Scotty just got a lemon since these units are handbuilt, and further problems could have been avoided with more insight into customer service.
to be fair, its the EXACT product kickstarter was made for.
@@jksjrgfpsjgrKickstarter wants a slice though, and not sure if the contract requires you to sell exclusively through them for the project brought to market that way. This company may have felt going that route compromised some core company value. Maybe they feel they want to get the product deficiencies ironed out before kick-starting it. There just is no way to know for sure. People make decisions for all sorts of reasons. So without knowing those reasons it's not fair to say that they should do it the way you would do it
@@RowanHawkins why even comment if you dont even know how kickstarter works??? ffs...
Was the video removed?
So awesome. Incorporating the pulse laser into the printing process for activation per layer is such a fantastic idea.
It would probably have been patentable.
@@helgew9008Heck, if Ben gets it up and running, hawks everywhere will be rushing to patent it and sue him for infringement! 🙃
He probably shouldn't have talked about it until having a prototype. He may be patented out of his own idea.
@@zsigmondkara I think the patent rules require that there no "prior art" published. By publishing this video, Ben is making the idea un-patentable, which ensures that everyone can take advantage of the idea should it turn out to be useful.
@@helgew9008 US patent law 35 U.S.C. Section 102 has a requirement for novelty ie the invention must not already been known to the public (prior art). However there are exceptions, it appears the inventor essentially has a one year grace period to file for a patent. Ben should be able file this if he wished but I reckon he would rather have it available to everyone.
3d printing metal inside structures could be interesting for making weird antennas
Home made multilayer pcb:s !!
@@ulwur would be very cool but can't plate the inside layers :(
Very custom battery packs.
Check out the antenna that comes on TI's AWR2544LOPEVM
@@nirodper Why not? SLS printed parts are porous.
Dude holy shit. I spent like 6 months trying to come up with an electroless copper recipe because I encountered the same issues of non-specificity on all the information and eventually gave up after smashing my head against the wall with so many failures. You are my hero for posting this. I cant wait to give it a go again. Thank you thank you thank you!
Considering that the copper chromite needs to be activated by an pulsed laser, I'm not sure this would work for a dipped part. Unless I missed something?
@@skypatrol716 My application will use a different catalyst, nothing to do with circuit boards or laser sintered parts. I was just struggling with making a general electroless copper bath for doing a proof of concept experiment. My understanding is that he wants his catalyst to be inactive, until it gets hit with the laser pulses so that you don't end up with catalyst all over the part plating copper everywhere.
@@ferriswhitehouse1476 Oh, I understand now. If I'm not wrong I believe Platinum is used as the catalyst in dipped parts. Or is it Palladian 😂
@@skypatrol716 I believe its palladium, but I don't know much other than that :)
@@ferriswhitehouse1476 Well good luck and I wish you success.
See you at Open Sauce - been a long time!
Ditto!
getting from here to there but my time is finally near
Glad you can make it! See you there!
Perfect for your type of work my friend Love your videos mate
@@AppliedScience The two geekiest RUclips geeks, in the same place, at the same time? Blimey!
Focusing a laser projector "by ear"!? That would certainly not have occurred to me, but it makes good sense once you explain it!
Surprising, yes. But those of us with galvo lasers do this all the time. Solid way to get you 95%'ish there.
Seems like a cheap auto focus method, with some signal conditioning.
I thought only meth users could hear light. Guess I was wrong. Lol
@@AmericanMaking LSD also lets you hear light. And see sound. :)
@@NScherdin Tasting texture was my thing, haha. Smooth is sweet, velvet is citrusy, rough is bitter
Did not expect this channel to be a part of this Micronics embargo that flooded my feed today but couldn’t be more grateful
lmao same
The only one that I'm gonna see, because I know for sure that it's gonna be the best of all.
I wish I could ban all the Linux channels from my feed to not see his and his team disgusting faces.
@@Ismsanmar actually I think Strange Parts’ second channel (Stranger Parts) had the best video on this machine, as far as actual product reviews go, of the 4-5 I ended up watching lol. I think this video is as much about the actual project as it is about the machine used to make it.
@@IsmsanmarWell, its been the least about this product so far... watch any of the other ones and youll see there is a loooot more to this whole thing
A couple of points about the dichroic mirror to make your life easier:
-reflect the shorter wavelength and transmit the longer one (this should be already the default for your set-up)
-if possible (or economically viable), try to find a 1064 Nd:YAG laser for the activation: it will be hard to find a mirror able to split 447nm from 532nm(I guess that's your green laser) and sustain the two lasers power. Most of the dichroic mirrors on the market are designed for fluorescent microscopy.
-if possible, use polarised light: p for the one to be reflected, s for the one to be transmitted
-remember to add an antireflective coating on the back of the mirror, or you will start carving the side of your printer
Lastly, a plate mirror may introduce beam deviations and a tilt in the focal plane of the activation laser; on the other hand, a cube beamsplitter may interfere with the calibration of the printer laset.
Nice! As for printing on 3D surfaces, you might want to look into "aerosol jet printing". This allows the printing on any kind of curved surface with fairly high resolution. BTW, the printing of internal conductive traces is well known in ceramic part manufacture where they generally use silver/ceramic mixtures to create the conductive traces. These parts are then sintered in vacuum. Using this method you can even print passive parts like inductors, resistors and capacitors inside the ceramic.
That's I was thinking about it, using the process that he suggested, you could basically print capacitors.
In high powered ion lasers, the cavity rings are soldered inside an alumina tube; the tubes can be well over a metre long. The soldering is done by sintering a silver loaded ring inside the tube where each cavity ring will sit, then the whole assembly is placed in a furnace to solder it. I recently dismantled a damaged tube assembly and it contained around 30 cavity rings in the tube.
It would definitely be cool to see a video specifically proving the idea of printing traces in areas that later aren't optically accessible.
but the "wires" runing thgroug the part would need to be tubes that need to have the loose material removed, so the copper can "collect" there
@@leobla744 Why tubes? They could be any shape, theoretically.
@@clonkex The traces at the very least have to run along the inside of some topological hole (e,g, tube) in the printed shape which is connected to the volume of plating fluid. Can't expect to make traces anywhere the fluid can't reach.
@@danielkruyt9475 Could we make the parts porous? The chemical bath would be an all day process as a result, but it could work.
@@heroslippy6666 My initial thought about the porous concept is, how do you clean off the dust? Ben mentions it as quite a critical step.
A company that just sells the product instead of requiring client interrogation first is indeed rare.
It's pretty telling if you don't understand why such "interrogation" is necessary for many products.
"I'm a mad scientist and my money is green" should be an acceptable answer when queried by a sales rep. Also acceptable are "because I think it's neat" and "what are you, a cop?"
@@spankyjeffro5320 it's pretty telling if you don't understand that "ask for pricing" flexes based on how much your organization appears to have money.
sure you can wrap it around as being necessary for knowing what the support costs will be and if the client understands how much running the device will cost and so forth, but ultimately it really is just about gauging how much their tender offer could have on it, relatedly you should make them and someone else compete for the contract, not act like you NEED their product because you know what happens with the pricing then..
@@HigherOriginsThe issue is that companies producing such specific devices can produce only so many devices. They have to consider for weirdos buying due to it being neat and doing nothing significant with it. Logically they want to sell to customers who would make an impact so more people would want the device which might result in more adoption which would result in more production etc. Our Ben Krasnow here is a person who such a company would just send the device to without even asking money for it. Unfortunately this approach applies to every aspect of limited availability "thing" such as specific schools or specific products etc. If you're a genius, the school would be like "please come for free, we'll give you the best room" etc. It's a limited availability issue. It's not that Ben is a genius and you're not ;-)
@@spankyjeffro5320 Poor poor corpo.... Are you crying? Why do you cry?
This could make some great RF metamaterials.
Yep. Energy harvesting antenna arrays would be a cool application.
Time for someone to start making ebay grade RF spectroscopes in their garage.
I used to run a Shipley 3000 PTH line, and we were adding a 500-1000ml of formaldehyde to the electroless (150 litre) bath every 3-4 hours to keep the plating thickness uniform throughout a production day.
Thank you for sharing arcane lore.
I was working on 3D printed electronics in my phd. At the begining I had similar idea that you presented in 16:20, but my problem was achieving copper in the whole sintered layer. Finally I ended up with FDM and precision dispensing with laser curing of MOD ink, which composition I developed myself.
Hey Ben! Glad to see youre still making videos!
Was a pleasure meeting you at OpenSauce. Your approach to reproducing and improving these science and engineering results is second to none.
This is fascinating. I like how you blend technologies in novel ways
Dude, if you could patent that idea of using a dichroic mirror to activate the catalyst as it prints, I bet you'd make a small fortune! You'd be a thousandaire in no time!
now that the information is public domain, no chance of a patent.
With that fancy dual laser setup you can even print the pads and stuff for components recessed, so you can more easily locate them for easier soldering, and also more easily pot everything in place to have a totally flat PCB with multiple planar layers, basically inlaying SMC's, really good for vibration damping because your whole board is monolithic.
I'm just interested in science in general and find this man to be an utter hero despite the world of intellectual gatekeeping around. A genius that needs to be recognized. Thanks for amazing videos over the years!
Sounds incredible. I bet microwave engineers would love the ability to put conductive surfaces arbitrarily throughout 3D space, feels like another metamaterials video is just around the corner.
I've tried to find a working electroless copper plating solution recipe before without like. Tried this today and I accidentally copper costed my thermocouple! I'm excited to have a working solution
YT is weirdly interesting place. Not sure how did I ended up here, because this is not really field of my interests, but I found it fascinating. Not just the scientific part of it, but also the passion and creativity. People really have extremely wide range of hobbies. :)
If you could 3D print the traces layer by layer, you could make your own tranformers to any ratio, and even motors. You don't actually need permenant magnets for motors, you can absolutely use electromagnets for stator and rotor, it results in a really powerful motor actually...
He's not printing the layers, just an activating surface which copper plates to. So where copper is wanted fluid must have access. Impressive all the same.
@@kenmercer2721 He said himself he could activate it layer by layer towards the end which surprised me. I assume he's just putting a hollow cavity though, either way, it could still work. We print motor windings on transformers on 2D PCBs today anyway, think of what you could do with 5 or 6 of those with just some cavities so that the doping could still work.
This is a crazy cool technique that basically lets you do dual density parts and create electrical paths between them for creating wearables it basically means that you have a 3D printer but double and I think that's going to create some really interesting part
Being able to print circuits through the body of a solid object could revolutionize circuit design.
I came across a similar problem of a lack of specific information when building a zinc plating setup. It's not quite as finicky but getting good information was really difficult. I have scanned through quite a lot of available studies, footnotes, took notes from YT videos etc and even stumbled across a good book from 1900 (exact year) that helped me piece together a suitable solution. Turns out that the companies (doing electroplating) guard their exact mixture of bath, current and temperature fairly closely.
Well done, if you are able write up your findings and share the arcane lore with humanity.
With regards to your final point about "who would want to use this", I work in testing in consumer product R&D and the ability to integrate sensors, control, and wiring directly into the weird 3D printed jigs and prototypes I'm provided by various project teams would be a game changer. At the very least it would cut down on the wire and kapton spaghetti that everything seems to turn into the moment you start to assemble it.
This sounds amazing. Circuits inside a 3D printed part! I could see so many uses for that.
Love how it solves the focal plane issue AND opens up the capability to print through. Brilliant, thanks for sharing!
Yes! 3d-printed parts with embedded circuits is something I have been dreaming about since I started my EE in undergad (over 10 years ago). The ability to 3d print some mechanical structure with circuits designed into the part opens up so many possibilities in robototics - which is what first got me thinking on this topic - but I bet there are a lot of applications that haven't even been dreamt of yet. Thank you so much for you content! I love your videos.
As usual, what Ben manages to achieve is amazing. These Micronics SLS printers look like they'll turn into a very good product, but I'd have been impressed if the video was just that he'd worked out DIY electroless copper plating, as someone who has wished he could do it before now. A more detailed video showing exactly how to do DIY electroless copper plating would be very nice! The fact that before anyone even has a Micronics SLS printer via the Kickstarter, Ben has already worked out how to hack one to make it print 3d circuit boards within prints is awesome.
I feel like the failure rate will be astronomical if they are used in a structural way. A big advantage of having a separate PCB is the mechanical de-coupling from the structure so that stresses do not affect the traces as much.
You could mechanically decouple in this scenario too.I don't know if its possible to do print in place joints with SLS but you can make separate parts that snap together in some way.
I was a chrome plater. No one will help you learn. If you read the published manuals they just describe the process, little else. We carry our secrets to the grave. Congratulations, you are now one of us.
knowledge is for the people
@@thesquirrel082190 same as strap-on wearing goth GF in fishnets
That 3D printer augmentation idea sounds extremely cool. I hope you can make this work.
I love the idea of wire harness/circut as part of the structure of an object. Car and ebikes come to mind as a super useful place for this, where aero dynamic, weight, aesthetic and manufacturing constraints really limit what can be done!
An cool idea with the integrated pulsed laser inside the Micronics would be to do multilayer boards.
You could make hollow "arteries" to pump the copper liquid through for the copper deposit on the activated layer.
This project is so cool!
Dude this sounds amazing. This is the kind of enabling step that can open an exponential number of doors.
All this with individual effort and an enlightened mind. You are amazing
The Micronics SLS printer is soooo tempting, but I will wait....... yeah...
You're stronger than me - I caved
It was a pleasure speaking to you at open sauce. My suggestion to explore further and achieve 3d conductive paths on a ceramic medium would be a checkmate for diy pcbs. Imagine a fully routed qfp 44 MC the size of a poker chip! Show us the way Mr. Wizard!
That dichroic mirror idea sounds AWESOME!
Think of it as the Bambu Lab Automatic Material System - an add-on that will improve the capabilities of your printer. It'd need software support, but that could be a really awesome, albeit niche, addition to the printer, and move it into a realm that no-one else has gone.
Another amazing video project-writeup. Thank you so much. I genuinely get very excited whenever I see your channel has a new upload.
I think this would be amazing for printing prosthetics, if you need to pick up electrical signals from where the prosthetic mounts to a location where a motor connects with signal processing build right in, or something like that.
I think Ben has a background in medical prototyping.
In my academic experience I have noticed that many papers are quite similar to the previously published ones with slight modifications. The problem that GPT helped you solve probably was published in some of the first (oldest) publication on the subject and after that was dropped as considered "common" knowledge in this specific field of science. This conclusion is also based on reading a considerable number of science publications from the late 1800 and early 1900.
I think that’s right. When making up “physiological salines”, I always add weighed solid compounds (salts, glucose, taurine etc.) to distilled water and pH the (almost) final mixture with NaOH and HCl solutions. The exception is adding Ca which is done by adding CaCl2 solution slowly into stirred or bubbled solution: if you added solid or too quickly, calcium salts (phosphates) can precipitate out.
It's incredible how patents hinder progress across all areas. In the case of 3D printers, the delay was also because there were closed patents that were renewed for decades, until the companies eventually gave up as they couldn't find a viable business model. Once those patents were released, homemade 3D printers began to emerge worldwide. I didn't know that even chemical formulas were patented ... basically, we're in a dark age where large monopolies have appropriated all knowledge and technological development.
I had proposed developing a system of Cooperative Patents, along the lines of GPL licenses and open-source software, at a university in Argentina. But I didn't receive any support. On the internet, I saw that there's another person (Frederik Questioner) who tried to propose something similar with the Open Patent Office, but it didn't gain much traction either.
Excellent video sharing your insights.
I would support the initiative. Very little from google except a LinkedIn user account.
@@KallePihlajasaari What do you mean by 'support the initiative'? And what things couldn't you find on Google? Was it about Frederik Questioner or about my proposal?
@@jonidimo I am in favour of placing as many 'patents' as possible into the public domain. Specifically I would like to see unused patents be easier to licence or forced into the public domain. I would also like patents from companies that become insolvent or close down move into the public domain. Having a national patent pool that provides free or very cheap access to patents from any academic work or the above groups would increase the chance of small startups getting started and the more small business we have the less globalist monopolies we have. One provides resilience the other slavery.
I think I went looking for Frederic because you mentioned him. However you are just a random userid so there is no way to find what you have been working on so no point in spending too much time guessing.
I'm always impressed with curved circuit board manufacturer. I have a 900R monitor and am using a Kinesis Advantage2 keyboard. I didn't realize antennas were created in this form inside electronics though. And yeah, we all have used LLMs for something technical that seems astounding.
I think that we all hate the circuit boards that are covered in epoxy or something similar and then it is impossible to see what is wrong with the circuits. Just imagine what could be achieved with such a technology. You are a real evil genius.
But to be honest that is really impressive and it can surely find a really useful application.
The amount of information per minute in this video is just great, so much to digest
Wires INSIDE of a solid part is the space age future I want, can't wait to hear more!
The brief tangent about chat GPT is something I've encountered before from asking language models questions about my projects. Even if I know pretty well what I'm doing, the way you can get it to break down and explain individual steps and their purpose has helped me learn new things that weren't immediately apparent on numerous occasions.
great video as always!
Home-made laser lithography is highly impressive. 👍
Glad to see you posting videos again. I missed learning new things and trying projects.
Amazing Ben! Exciting work! Thanks for sharing
Ganz herzlichen Dank, dass Sie nach langer Zeit wieder ein neues Video gemacht haben! :) Mit "SLS" hatte ich schon vor weit über 20 Jahren beruflich zu tun, dabei habe ich mich etwas in den "3D-Druck" verliebt. :) Die im Video vorgestellte Technologie ist sehr interessant!
Beste Grüße aus Deutschland :)
Now you can print a Luneburg lens for radar collimation. You could also print radar wave guides and feed horns. You could also print bifilar coils with exact lengths so that it is the perfect tuned tank of inductive and capacitive value for a specific frequency.
Back in 2010 I had been messing with a bunch of .5 mm LED lights and trying to get the soldering, wires and all the parts to be small and customizable enough to meet my needs. Maybe after seeing this some of the steps you are doing will make this project doable again.
Words cannot describe my excitement, and there is a kickstarter for it not completely sold out already? Done. . .
A workbench just got happier
As an electronics engineer, I'm really looking forward to technology enabling fully 3D PCB. This will completely change the way traces are laid out and will make designing electronics so much more fun!
One thing to consider (other than chatGPT/LLMs) when optimizing experimental variables (such as your electroless plating solution) is using some kind of DoE (Design of Experiments) software. Although it probably wouldn't solve your problem here (since the order of addition was the important factor), it can be really useful for optimizations. Typically the software will suggest some different "factor levels" (or whatever it's called) to test, then you can enter your results, and it will suggest new improved conditions which you can test. It may require quite a few iterations, though, depending on the use case.
Really enjoyed watching this. I love how you clearly identified and explained the major issues you encountered.
One thing i didnt understand is how you can plate an internal trace even if you activate it with a pulsed laser during printing.
Very interesting. When it' comes to resolution or spot sizes numerical aperture is everything.
This guy is modding This thing already and it's still in beta. So awesome
Wow, I just watched a really helpful video about transistor switching circuits from 11 years ago. I was curious if you're still around, and I'm glad you are!
Every new video Ben releases makes me rethink spending more time on projects. Amazing as always!
This is fascinating concept, Ben. What you're describing is a way to build structural components with inbuilt wires and circuitry, thus building parts for a robot, say, that are multifunctional. Mind blown!
This video made want an SLS printer more than any normal review.
I think you are on to an incredibly useful technique we will see a lot in the future especially when it comes to failure detection/prevention such as formation of cracks (or maybe even strain - at least over bigger surfaces)!
Either as a continuity measurement or via monitoring the resistivity!
Parts subject to vibration where the main issue is wires coming lose or breaking might benefit from this. Cool.
WOW, internal copper traces - PLEASE MAKE THIS VIDEO - daaaamn. OK buying one of these.
That tangent at the end... With good enough resolution/small enough layer height on that speculative machine you could print multi-layered PCB in any shape, which would absolutely be revolutionary.
The lasers only activates the catalyst, it still needs to be exposed to the plating liquid but can be under overhangs or on complex wrap around and inside profiles.
Glad that you're okay! Your videos are sought-after gems for many of us here.
This was straight sci-fi, you're making it a reality.
One of the very few educational channels - Advert free - Thanks Ben.
An easy way to find focus is to let the reflected light scatter onto a light coloured surface; you will see a pattern of laser speckle which is an excellent indicator of focus, when the spot is well focussed, the pattern will become much coarser.
Super Fascinating as always. Sizzle focusing. That was some bowing with the hot air gun. 1n5711, what a great circuit. If only I was in a startup instead of an overgrown elephant of a tech company where security and H&S crush inovation this is just the channel to find those techniques that really work. Inspiring. Much appreciated Ben.
Dude that bit at the end is mind blowing
Hey Ben, nice to hear from you 👍
These video journals somehow get better and better
The end pretty much echoed my sentiment at the beginning, while I can't really think of anything to use this for right now I feel like if the capability was easily available people would definitely find all kinds of cool uses for it
Incredibly cool and interesting stuff! I was not expecting to see how strong those traces were bonded to the substrate. Although, I guess I shouldn't be surprised since it's basically fused directly into it.
I think your solution for dynamic track creation is extremely worth pursuing and developing for commercial sale
This is extremely cool. I imagine this creating resistors, caps, and maybe diodes, instead of them being separate components.
Fascinating Ben - I remember when you started your channel and it's good to see you again. I envy your tech abilities :)
You Sir are impressive,
I would recommend that you reach out to the company that gave you the tool that you’re working with in the video. I believe they would sponsor all of your needs in attempting the experimental idea you shared towards the end of the video. They as a company would find lucrative use for what you are freely sharing, still share it but have them provide everything you need in order to vet out the operational possibility and issues as you work through devising the final parts.
Very impressive
I'd really like to be able to print the components as well, but for now this is a fantastic idea!
It's great to see you back with a new video. Whatever subject you choose is fine with me. Thanks Ben.
This idea of printing the circuitry within the structural parts was one of the fundamental ideas behind a 100% reprap machine, or a Von Neumann device. I'm very interested to see more.
You can vary the distance between the ball lens and the collimating optic to change your focal distance. For concave surfaces make the focal distance about the same as the mean radius of curvature.
This is why I'm a Patreon supporter. Thanks!
I think there is good use to print parts with electronic circuits on them. From antennas integrated into cases to miniaturization by just getting rid of a pcb entirely and integrate everything into a case.
However, for mass production we also need a plastic that can cope with the heat of smd soldering.
For light the FFT of the the currents across the emitting aperture perpendicular to the plane of interest is the pattern. So large span small angle, small span large angle. | Being able to make coated hollow structures would be amazing for RF filters.
Yes! Always a good day when you post bro!
Another amazing project, thanks for taking all the time to develop and document this!
I was hyped up to see a new video come up! I always get multiple cool ideas / pieces of info / new ways to think about stuff from your videos!
Im glad to see you didnt have the same headache that Strange Parts had.
This has some serious potential for 3D metamaterials.
Your videos are, without question, some of the best around. Regardless topic, subject, genre or target demographics.
If you haven’t heard of this, don’t know how that would be, a nice gentleman released an open source SLS 3D printer.
His project is called SLS4All. I thought that would be an awesome way of realizing your dichroic mirror idea without having to do a ground up design.
I’ve been wanting to launch my channel with a project that kind of stands out and the SLS4All build is what I’m going to attempt. Because I want to see this project succeed, I hope content creators with the resources and experience, like yourself, take on the Sls4All project too. And , like I said, it would be a great way to integrate your 3D copper trace idea. Thanks for your time- Jason Burchell
Fantastic as always Ben! I've had really bad experiences with chatgpt and technical questions (fea solver cards for example), so be careful! LLMs seen to be super confident even when they are blatantly wrong. Keep up the amazing projects!
Great video, so much work going into this, you saying "see you next time. bye" is iconic!
Whoa this is a wild video Ben! Pushing the envelope as always!