I love seeing the pick and place on a 3D Printer but they are slowly learning that conductive filament isn’t low enough resistance for circuits and connecting to it has incredibly high contact resistance. Using a circuit board is the solution and he mentioned that is part of the future design.
Hi CHEP, we know the limitations of the conductive filaments out there. We are trying to work with the limitations rather than let them limit us. Having said this, we do see use a PCB instead of conductive filament in certain places and then use conductive filaments for add-on features.
@@shapelampofficial3080 I'll be honest, I don't get why you would shoehorn conductive filaments into this at this stage, given their limitations. Unless the thinking is that this is just a placeholder until you can integrate an additive process that comes without the extra resistance. At this stage the sheer amount of resistance makes it a total non-starter as a real product IMO - it's just a waste of energy for no good reason. Why use this when you could have a lamp with the same light output that uses a lot less energy?
@@ska042 I completely agree. not only that, but 3d printing is a massively expensive manufacturing process as it is. sure, its got a lower bar for entry, because of reduced tooling cost, but it just doesnt make sense to 3d print inferior parts that you can do much better for a lot less time and cost. especially when the limitations are so bad.
With conductive filament still being very high resistance (even protopasta's is 1.75mm filament is 200-300 ohm/cm) I can't help but wonder if we should be implementing silver or copper trace inlay mechanisms as well similar to carbon fiber inlaying 3D printers. i.e.: the trace offers the path of least resistance for the majority of the circuit with the conductive filament essentially used to connect the layers.
I did research for my scription in printing conductive material. (f.e. copper / Silver loaded filament and printing conductive PCB-repair paste (syringe style). They all suffered high resistance due to the conductive particles only making 'single point contacts' of the metal particles on the microscopic scale. biggest problem being that their conductivity also varied per mm length in a pasted path with 1mm2 section. Other option would require special Hi-Temp extroders that was out of scope. A wire filled filament sounds interesting, though it will be trickey to print it in stacked layers between normal PLA f.e.
@@AlienSaxophone785 I was specifically thinking of something like the Markforged style of (Onyx?) printers, a dual extruder 3D printer that inlays a continuous fibre filament on top of each extruded material layer, which produces a much stronger result than using single extruder printers with chopped fibre filaments. There's no reason something similar couldn't deploy actual copper or silver wire instead of continuous fibre filament. Note: this is a second spool, a different filament than the main material since you wouldn't be able to get "stretchy" copper or silver conductors inside a different material.
Correcting myself, "Onyx" is Markforged's chopped fibre filament solution. Their solution I was thinking of is inventively named "continuous fibre" printing.
So many questions. Can you show the prototype working? How do they achieve perfect flatness to get a press fit LED with sufficient electrical contact on all the pads? How about efficiency? 40V DC is over 8 times the forward voltage of a single LED. And he says half the brightness. So this is worse than 1/80 the efficiency of a traditionally wired LED? And the statement that the heat produced is insignificant is hard to believe with that kind of loss buried inside the print. The pick and place seems to be putting the cart before the horse a bit.
Granted it’s probably *locked down by patents*, but something similar to those “Continuous Fiber Reenforced” 3D Prints would be interesting for laying wires in rather than conducive filament. Granted that tech may only work for Flat Layers, not going “up” per se.
What idea though that occurs to me is that you could use the 3-D printing to create patterns in the shed that would allow either a pattern to show up in the light if you look at it, or some kind of shadows that could appear on the walls when the light is on. Another way to think about it could be that you have a regular outer ring for the main light, and then the inner shade could have the pattern, and in that case, it could actually be a lattice so have holes in it, when you want to have the pattern show up on the wall.
Very interesting and thought provoking! Maybe they could reduce their trace resistance by pick and placing lines of 0 Ohm resistors along the trace path. The conductive filament would only act as a short bridge between the resistors. If they maintain a complete (unbroken) trace of conductive filament, they would not need 100% connection yield to make it work. They might also be able to embed a simple connector to avoid having to solder the external wiring.
Hi Jon, We are in fact using spring connectors to avoid soldering, the prototype printed part works like that! Thanks for the ideas, we're going to toy with them :)
if there is a need of installing a pcb inside the lamp housing, you should just ask the pcb factory to solder the leds onto the pcb, then fit the pcb into the lamp diffuser and the lamp... using 40V DC is not quite human safe, always keep voltages below 36VDC. don't waste precious energy in the self-heating conductive printed materials, when u use an led, you want to prevent energy release as waste heat as much as possible.
The Add:North Koltron G1 filament has way superior conductivity to the ProtoPasta one (down to 2 ohm-cm), but it is not a PLA base and is also quite a bit more expensive.
We tried the Koltron G1, it prints quite badly sadly, and needs 290 degree nozzle temps, causing it to burn in the nozzle if it is not being constantly extruded. We clogged some nozzles like that.
This is all very cool, and I’m sure it can lead to some really neat lighting shapes, but have a thought about the environmental impact? If one of the LEDs fails early, or even if they all fail at the same time when you expect them to fail, doesn’t that make the entire fixture useless? Or is there someway to figure out how to replace the LEDs so that you could retain the fixture? or maybe there could be a back up plan so when the LEDs go out, there’s a standard Edison socket so that you could still put a regular lightbulb in there and not have to throw away the whole fixture?
Yup environmentally this seems pretty bad in the current state. The disposable nature of it due to integrated LEDs as you said, but also bad energy efficiency, if it's using the resistive filament to connect the LEDs.
Wonder if you could use a Aluminium mig welding like spool wire layer as a toolhead that just installs solder covered copper wire from the contact to where it needs to go on that layer with a small cutter at the tip, the soldered wire then would join with the previous layers wire when the solder above melts the solder below, this would allow far lower resistances improving efficiency and reducing heat buildup. When installing the wire component you could use the heat of the soldered wire to press it into the previous layer which allows the tip to make sure that the end of the wire trace is flat with the surface of the print ready for the next layer. Just a thought that could reduce the cost of driver power supplies and reduce their size.
We looked at something vaguely similar, search for Fiber Encapsulation in 3D printing. This is interesting and there are a lot of proof of concepts, although expensive to create and a bit limiting.
I've tested every single conductive filament on the market (as of this comment anyway!) - The Protopasta is by far the easiest to print and most repeatable. There are 'better' filaments out there in electronic terms like BlackMagic, but they're a nightmare to print in any machine with a tightly constrained filament path. Personally I think the only way to go about integrated electronics is to develop a thermopolymer coated copper wire print nozzle that can inlay actual wire, much like the Markforged machiens inlay contiuous fibre reinforcement.
Ah...but then you're talking about a multiple-degrees-of-rotation print head, to infill around the laid cable. Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of 3D printing? (I'm not saying it definitely would.) One thing I was thinking was 15-cm nanotubes staggered into short near-zero resistance filaments that the print head could chop, as needed, mid-print. This would get you great functionality if you could lay most of your circuits out in one plane, and "pretty good" functionality extending off of that plane...
@@JakeWitmer Not really. The Markforged fibre extruders use a thin fibre coated in thermoplastic, it's extruded through a heated nozzle as a regular filament would be, only it has to be cut with a blade once retracted. The plastic around the fibre just melts and solidifies the same as the rest of the part :) I've also tried nano-tubes in various forms in our own filaments, and they're a bit of a nightmare to be honest! Very conductive for sure, but *very* abbrasive.
Or just use a LumenPnP for making the PCBs and place those in the print with a tool-changer device as someone said. Granted all of that makes repair/separation of components pre-disposal more difficult compared to just *screwing parts together* oof
The PPP System. Pick,place,and push. Love it. What about PPPing short, or preformed actual wire in strategic places? Not all runs NEED to be printed, but to me the big advantage of conductive printing is the ability to print those really special places. The PPP System would really help me with that. Fantastic. Thank you
Looks like they would need some sort of 3D MID process to really get this LED idea going the next step. An other idea i could see is to use something like the PCB printer technology (Voltera?) where they apply conductive liquids with a syringe that then dries and turns into traces on the circuit board. I think they mostly use some pretty expensive liquid silver solutions, but there could be cheaper solutions that still massively reducce the power losses from FDM printed traces. Conductive filament just does not seem to be the right tool for this application.
From an engineering standpoint, this is great, or at least could lead to great innovation. But I honestly don't like the idea that electronics and plastics are fused together, with the electronic parts housed in a way that they can't be replaced. It seems like an engineering shortcut where convenience in the design process is favored over repairability and recyclability. This is the same thing as apple gluing batteries in place.
How angled can it be? Unclear from the video...I was wondering that...can it put something in at a 30-degree angle or is it "90-degrees-from-horizontal or bust"? AKA *I want to know this, too.*
Multi-tool 3d printers are going to be the next gimmick going through the 3d printing market. Should get interesting what tools people mix and match together. Even multiple hot ends makes 3d printing multiple filaments more viable. But combining Additive, subtractive, laser engraving, plotting, and pick and place into a single rig is an insane thought.
How to make a led light extremely dificult and expencive to manufacture, and Lets make is ridiculesly inaficient by using high voltage DC over a resistive wire run... I'm sorry, this is not the future, not with resistive filament... Unless the resistance is part of the Electronic design.
@@shapelampofficial3080 was a joke, but still, the first seconds I was quite surprised, he sounds and looks quite similar, also the glasses did the trick xD
I love seeing the pick and place on a 3D Printer but they are slowly learning that conductive filament isn’t low enough resistance for circuits and connecting to it has incredibly high contact resistance. Using a circuit board is the solution and he mentioned that is part of the future design.
Hi CHEP, we know the limitations of the conductive filaments out there. We are trying to work with the limitations rather than let them limit us. Having said this, we do see use a PCB instead of conductive filament in certain places and then use conductive filaments for add-on features.
@@shapelampofficial3080 I'll be honest, I don't get why you would shoehorn conductive filaments into this at this stage, given their limitations. Unless the thinking is that this is just a placeholder until you can integrate an additive process that comes without the extra resistance. At this stage the sheer amount of resistance makes it a total non-starter as a real product IMO - it's just a waste of energy for no good reason. Why use this when you could have a lamp with the same light output that uses a lot less energy?
@@ska042 I completely agree. not only that, but 3d printing is a massively expensive manufacturing process as it is. sure, its got a lower bar for entry, because of reduced tooling cost, but it just doesnt make sense to 3d print inferior parts that you can do much better for a lot less time and cost. especially when the limitations are so bad.
@@shapelampofficial3080 but they still limit you.
pick and place a heatset insert into a lollipop feature at the point of contact
With conductive filament still being very high resistance (even protopasta's is 1.75mm filament is 200-300 ohm/cm) I can't help but wonder if we should be implementing silver or copper trace inlay mechanisms as well similar to carbon fiber inlaying 3D printers. i.e.: the trace offers the path of least resistance for the majority of the circuit with the conductive filament essentially used to connect the layers.
I did research for my scription in printing conductive material. (f.e. copper / Silver loaded filament and printing conductive PCB-repair paste (syringe style).
They all suffered high resistance due to the conductive particles only making 'single point contacts' of the metal particles on the microscopic scale. biggest problem being that their conductivity also varied per mm length in a pasted path with 1mm2 section. Other option would require special Hi-Temp extroders that was out of scope.
A wire filled filament sounds interesting, though it will be trickey to print it in stacked layers between normal PLA f.e.
@@AlienSaxophone785 I was specifically thinking of something like the Markforged style of (Onyx?) printers, a dual extruder 3D printer that inlays a continuous fibre filament on top of each extruded material layer, which produces a much stronger result than using single extruder printers with chopped fibre filaments. There's no reason something similar couldn't deploy actual copper or silver wire instead of continuous fibre filament.
Note: this is a second spool, a different filament than the main material since you wouldn't be able to get "stretchy" copper or silver conductors inside a different material.
Correcting myself, "Onyx" is Markforged's chopped fibre filament solution. Their solution I was thinking of is inventively named "continuous fibre" printing.
So many questions. Can you show the prototype working? How do they achieve perfect flatness to get a press fit LED with sufficient electrical contact on all the pads? How about efficiency? 40V DC is over 8 times the forward voltage of a single LED. And he says half the brightness. So this is worse than 1/80 the efficiency of a traditionally wired LED? And the statement that the heat produced is insignificant is hard to believe with that kind of loss buried inside the print. The pick and place seems to be putting the cart before the horse a bit.
Granted it’s probably *locked down by patents*, but something similar to those “Continuous Fiber Reenforced” 3D Prints would be interesting for laying wires in rather than conducive filament.
Granted that tech may only work for Flat Layers, not going “up” per se.
Fascinating. Great video. Do more like this! Thanks for sharing
What idea though that occurs to me is that you could use the 3-D printing to create patterns in the shed that would allow either a pattern to show up in the light if you look at it, or some kind of shadows that could appear on the walls when the light is on. Another way to think about it could be that you have a regular outer ring for the main light, and then the inner shade could have the pattern, and in that case, it could actually be a lattice so have holes in it, when you want to have the pattern show up on the wall.
Fanboy for his sponsors. Just another late night infomercial. Good job selling out
Very interesting and thought provoking!
Maybe they could reduce their trace resistance by pick and placing lines of 0 Ohm resistors along the trace path. The conductive filament would only act as a short bridge between the resistors. If they maintain a complete (unbroken) trace of conductive filament, they would not need 100% connection yield to make it work. They might also be able to embed a simple connector to avoid having to solder the external wiring.
Hi Jon,
We are in fact using spring connectors to avoid soldering, the prototype printed part works like that! Thanks for the ideas, we're going to toy with them :)
Very interesting!
Is he using a JUKI nozzle to pick and place the LED's
Seems like they could embed a pre-assembled PCB into the print and all problems are solved. But then what's the product?
I think the idea is the customer can change where to place the leds or buttons?
if there is a need of installing a pcb inside the lamp housing, you should just ask the pcb factory to solder the leds onto the pcb, then fit the pcb into the lamp diffuser and the lamp... using 40V DC is not quite human safe, always keep voltages below 36VDC. don't waste precious energy in the self-heating conductive printed materials, when u use an led, you want to prevent energy release as waste heat as much as possible.
The Add:North Koltron G1 filament has way superior conductivity to the ProtoPasta one (down to 2 ohm-cm), but it is not a PLA base and is also quite a bit more expensive.
We tried the Koltron G1, it prints quite badly sadly, and needs 290 degree nozzle temps, causing it to burn in the nozzle if it is not being constantly extruded. We clogged some nozzles like that.
You could make a lithophane cover
please print in top of the pcb....I'm using a pcb like material as heated bed and I like it
This is all very cool, and I’m sure it can lead to some really neat lighting shapes, but have a thought about the environmental impact? If one of the LEDs fails early, or even if they all fail at the same time when you expect them to fail, doesn’t that make the entire fixture useless? Or is there someway to figure out how to replace the LEDs so that you could retain the fixture? or maybe there could be a back up plan so when the LEDs go out, there’s a standard Edison socket so that you could still put a regular lightbulb in there and not have to throw away the whole fixture?
Yup environmentally this seems pretty bad in the current state. The disposable nature of it due to integrated LEDs as you said, but also bad energy efficiency, if it's using the resistive filament to connect the LEDs.
Wonder if you could use a Aluminium mig welding like spool wire layer as a toolhead that just installs solder covered copper wire from the contact to where it needs to go on that layer with a small cutter at the tip, the soldered wire then would join with the previous layers wire when the solder above melts the solder below, this would allow far lower resistances improving efficiency and reducing heat buildup. When installing the wire component you could use the heat of the soldered wire to press it into the previous layer which allows the tip to make sure that the end of the wire trace is flat with the surface of the print ready for the next layer. Just a thought that could reduce the cost of driver power supplies and reduce their size.
We looked at something vaguely similar, search for Fiber Encapsulation in 3D printing. This is interesting and there are a lot of proof of concepts, although expensive to create and a bit limiting.
That website is fun. I just made a lamp!
I've tested every single conductive filament on the market (as of this comment anyway!) - The Protopasta is by far the easiest to print and most repeatable. There are 'better' filaments out there in electronic terms like BlackMagic, but they're a nightmare to print in any machine with a tightly constrained filament path. Personally I think the only way to go about integrated electronics is to develop a thermopolymer coated copper wire print nozzle that can inlay actual wire, much like the Markforged machiens inlay contiuous fibre reinforcement.
Ah...but then you're talking about a multiple-degrees-of-rotation print head, to infill around the laid cable. Wouldn't that defeat the whole purpose of 3D printing? (I'm not saying it definitely would.) One thing I was thinking was 15-cm nanotubes staggered into short near-zero resistance filaments that the print head could chop, as needed, mid-print. This would get you great functionality if you could lay most of your circuits out in one plane, and "pretty good" functionality extending off of that plane...
@@JakeWitmer Not really. The Markforged fibre extruders use a thin fibre coated in thermoplastic, it's extruded through a heated nozzle as a regular filament would be, only it has to be cut with a blade once retracted. The plastic around the fibre just melts and solidifies the same as the rest of the part :)
I've also tried nano-tubes in various forms in our own filaments, and they're a bit of a nightmare to be honest! Very conductive for sure, but *very* abbrasive.
Shoving is the answer. We are hear to protect you. Do not trust the pusher head.
Amazing high five of course two of them one for your brother
Using Opulo’s Open Source Feeders once those are released would be neat!
Or just use a LumenPnP for making the PCBs and place those in the print with a tool-changer device as someone said.
Granted all of that makes repair/separation of components pre-disposal more difficult compared to just *screwing parts together* oof
Hey Joel, how did you end up going to Malta? Was there one brand that supported your vist and hooked you up with other interesting people?
I talked about it in the beginning here: 3D Printing Malta to Save History!
ua-cam.com/video/zuWp2uZx8Zk/v-deo.html
@@3DPrintingNerd Thank you I missed it!
First steps toward AIO PCB Manufacturing Machines.
This is one of those things I think is going to become more and more common. Need but wish it was
The PPP System. Pick,place,and push. Love it. What about PPPing short, or preformed actual wire in strategic places? Not all runs NEED to be printed, but to me the big advantage of conductive printing is the ability to print those really special places.
The PPP System would really help me with that.
Fantastic. Thank you
Looks like they would need some sort of 3D MID process to really get this LED idea going the next step. An other idea i could see is to use something like the PCB printer technology (Voltera?) where they apply conductive liquids with a syringe that then dries and turns into traces on the circuit board. I think they mostly use some pretty expensive liquid silver solutions, but there could be cheaper solutions that still massively reducce the power losses from FDM printed traces. Conductive filament just does not seem to be the right tool for this application.
We did look into a PCB printer that uses conductive liquid/paste but the final product is too expensive and some 'inks' are too expensive.
From an engineering standpoint, this is great, or at least could lead to great innovation. But I honestly don't like the idea that electronics and plastics are fused together, with the electronic parts housed in a way that they can't be replaced. It seems like an engineering shortcut where convenience in the design process is favored over repairability and recyclability. This is the same thing as apple gluing batteries in place.
I'd like to have seen the lights working. It seems to me that the pick and place needs to operate in every axis of rotation to be truly valuable.
How angled can it be? Unclear from the video...I was wondering that...can it put something in at a 30-degree angle or is it "90-degrees-from-horizontal or bust"? AKA *I want to know this, too.*
@@JakeWitmer Indeed.
where can i buy one of these
Multi-tool 3d printers are going to be the next gimmick going through the 3d printing market. Should get interesting what tools people mix and match together. Even multiple hot ends makes 3d printing multiple filaments more viable. But combining Additive, subtractive, laser engraving, plotting, and pick and place into a single rig is an insane thought.
Come by our stand in Formnext and check our toolchanger !!
Ooh, hope to see you there
Wondering if can help, CR30 or Ender 7? Looking to buy a ready built one
Want!!! :-)
Sanjay would of loved this
Agreed. He would have absolutely loved this.
How to make a led light extremely dificult and expencive to manufacture, and Lets make is ridiculesly inaficient by using high voltage DC over a resistive wire run... I'm sorry, this is not the future, not with resistive filament... Unless the resistance is part of the Electronic design.
Now 3d print an LED...
Hi!!!
Cool tech, but repairability and energy efficiency doesn't seem to be great - not sure its what the planet needs tbh.
Probably one step closer to what the planet needs...even if it's not "all the way there."
pogo pins may help
Carl Bugeja has long hair now????
Not him, but also a great engineer in Malta!
@@shapelampofficial3080 was a joke, but still, the first seconds I was quite surprised, he sounds and looks quite similar, also the glasses did the trick xD
I just realized that it's you! LoL
I don't know what is worse, the handicraft machine or the pronunciation ....
Not so incredible considering the very premium price. Its clear E3D is trying to have good margins, towards high profit
It's an extremely premium machiene, with hiwin guides on all axes. Costs add up quickly, guessing the lienar rails themselves cost upwards of 600$
@@morbus5726 I don't argue that, I argue the quick change mechanism
@@ralmslb well it's all milled aluminum, which is pretty expensive. I guess the price might be a little high if you consider that.
@@morbus5726 true, but I wonder to what extent couldn't some parts be casted to be nore affordable for the masses.
Well the idea is nice, meabye even innovative, but they need someone to push them forward