Injet printing of microwave boards

[biff44]

Anybody using an injet printer for quik turn protoboards? Saw one at the IMS show. Here is a paper on it:

https://pcdandf.com/cms/content/view/3839/95/

Apparently you can do multilayer boards, flexible boards, etc.

 

[pranam77]

Thanks for the info. Nice concept indeed. Naturally the inks and the printer may be costlier than the present method of screen printing.

 

[biff44]

I am very curious!

There are various routing machines out there, and some of you like them a lot. I had one at a company once, but found it required a lot of effort to keep running.

We all have inkjet printers! There might be some way to just buy a silver ink cartridge, glue a small piece of microwave board to a thick paper backer, stick it in the printer, and print a protoboard! Maybe no calibration or expensive equipment needed...just hit the "print" button in windows!

 

[vfone]

I know somebody who used conductive inks produced by the company below, but not using an inkjet printer.

**broken link removed**

The circuit behaves fine at microwave frequencies, but definitely the thickness of the printed ink was greater than the thickness that is printed by an inkjet printer.

Also from my understanding not all the inkjet printers works with this kind of conductive ink. A try could cost you a print-head, which values almost as a new printer.

 

[biff44]

Printers are pretty cheap, though. And if you could get the ink in a replaceable cartridge type (the ones where the print head is part of the replaceable cartridge),
then away we go. I suppose you could even take a used cartridge, drill a hole in it, and fill it with the conductive ink to see if it works.

I would want the printed lines to be very thick, as I would want to be able to solder components to them.

Added after 6 minutes:

At the show someone had a printer running from Dimatix Fujifilm.

She said the following vendors make the conductive inks:
Sunjet
Inktec
Advanced Nanoproducts

 

[pranam77]

I know somebody who used conductive inks produced by the company below, but not using an inkjet printer.

**broken link removed**

The circuit behaves fine at microwave frequencies, but definitely the thickness of the printed ink was greater than the thickness that is printed by an inkjet printer.

Also from my understanding not all the inkjet printers works with this kind of conductive ink. A try could cost you a print-head, which values almost as a new printer.

Yes..i have seen PCB's with silver conductive inks working well and too very easy to repair in case of any damage to the tracks. Thatz the same technology used in low cost membrane keypads and flexible PCB's.

 

[brumi]

Look this silver ink for jet printers