Aug 5, 2015 | By Alec

Anyone who has ever worked on more complex building projects will have, at one point or another, become frustrated about electronic circuits. Many are quite expensive or don’t quite do the job you’re looking for, but making your own can be an arduous and time-consuming endeavor. But what if there was an easy, affordable and stress-free of building them yourself? Well there is: It’s called the 3D Circuit Printing Kit, developed by a team of Texas students, and is a 3D printer boosterpack capable of controlling up to three extruders for Texas Instruments MSP430F5529LP.

The students in question are Blesson Mathew, Abel Netsereab, Hien Tuong, Jean Leppez and Aby Thomas, all engineering students at the University of Texas Dallas. Calling themselves CIRC3D, they are further supported by a second team consisting of Johnny Appiah, Michael Ortega, Raul Gamboa, Son Nguyen and Michael Wood, who are known as XTRUDER. Together, they have just launched a Kickstarter for this interesting kit, which is an inexpensive development kit for the MSP430F5529 USB microcontroller.The project itself started with the goal of developing a kit for a single extruder for Texas Instruments, but since grew towards the dual extruders and paste extruder.

As they explain on their crowdfunding campaign, this 3D Circuit Printing Kit has three advantages over alternatives on the market – especially in regards to 3D printing. Most important, obviously, is its low cost and the low cost of its ink. ‘A paste extruder was designed to help extrude a copper paste from a syringe with a plunger. Some people use silver nanoparticle which is very expensive and requires a curing temperature of 240 C, which would melt the plastic we are printing beneath a conductive trace,’ they explain. ‘With our current design we are able to have a steady flow our copper paste with a syringe just under 1 mm. We are in the process of finding a way to have a much smaller feature size with our syringe.’

However, this system is also very convenient for avoiding soldering almost entirely. The secret is in the blobs made by the syringe, to which parts can be easily mounted. ‘The paste extruder has the added functionality of forming blobs of paste which can mount electrical components on the copper traces without any additional soldering required,’ they explain.

And to cater to the needs of tinkerers everywhere, this 3D printing circuit kit even features options for adding two additional extruders, enabling you to print multi-layer ciruits and structures during a single session. ‘Furthermore, the kit comes with a dual extruder which is able to extrude using two different materials if desired, we are currently under development with printing using Repetier and Pronterface for both materials,’ they say. ‘The board also makes use of six carrier boards modules which accommodate DRV8825s to drive the motors for the three axis and the extruder motors which can be easily replaced from the boosterpack. The drivers we use specifically are the Pololu DRV8825 modular drivers, any drivers with a similar pin orientation will function.’ 

The boosterpack itself has been developed using Eagle CAD, and can be easily connected to the TI Launchpad to control the 3D printer in question. While experienced users might find it very easy to work with, the team has also provided a tutorial that can be found here. As for programming, things couldn’t be simpler. ‘As a completely open-source project we have all of our codes posted on GitHubfor direct utilization or further developments necessary. The firmware to control the launchpad utilizes Energia,’ they say.

In short, this boosterpack is a very flexible option that is a perfect and very modular option for experienced makers everywhere. It is also remarkably cheaper than most alternatives, costing just around $100 for the complete kit. And as most of the work has already been done, shipping can begin in just two months or so. For more information, check out the team’s blog here, as well as their Kickstarter campaign here for pledging options. 

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

 

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