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A step toward fully 3D-printed active electronics
- sambeau 2y agoIt's refreshing to see this labeled as a "step toward".
- sebstefan 2y agoOh my god. We might get real life redstone.
- jayyhu 2y agoReading the article, it looks like so far they only have a working resettable fuse (a passive device), and only hypothesize that a transistor was possible with the copper-infused PLA filament. So no actual working active electronics. And from the paper linked in the article[1], it seems the actual breakthrough is the discovery that copper-infused PLA filament exhibits a PTC-effect, which is noteworthy, but definitely not "3D-Printed Active Electronics" newsworthy. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17452759.2024.2404157#d1e604 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17452759.2024.2...
- greenavocado 2y ago> So no actual working active electronics. Oh so this is another scam like the MIT Food Computer. At this point I assume everything coming out of MIT is a scam until independently validated by disinterested third parties
- frognumber 2y agoThis shouldn't be a downvote or flag. It's a serious problem, especially at elite institutions, and especially at MIT and Stanford. It's also not out-of-line with what credible sources observe: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/ https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea... I'm affiliated with MIT, and have been for the vast majority of my life, including at points in fairly senior roles. If you shut people out pointing problems, it will never get better. There's an incredible urge to defend elite academic institutions, but it's not in the interest of those institutions. Remember your civics class (patriots criticize their government institutions). The only way I see this fixed involves a period where MIT is viewed like a used car salesman in the public eye for at least enough years to cause enough pain to lead to reform. The endowment is big enough it'll do fine in the end. If it keeps sliding to fraud, it won't.
- hatsunearu 2y agousually even these academia hype pieces have some grain of utility but this one was so incomprehensibly bad that i was genuinely confused if i'm reading it incorrectly. what the hell?
- IanCal 2y agoHang on, can you explain why this is passive and not active? > Harnessing the described phenomenon, we created the first semiconductor-free active electronic devices fully 3D printed via material extrusion. We demonstrate this breakthrough through the implementation of monolithically 3D-printed logic gates.
- magicalhippo 2y agoThey've created a Polymeric Positive Temperature Coefficient (PPTC) device. As it heats up the resistance gets very high very abruptly. While it is non-linear, diodes are also considered passive devices[2], as active is taken to mean electrical control of current flow. In this case one could induce current control through thermal means, ie an adjacent heating element, and if you potted that in a box I guess you could argue the box is an active device. But not the PPTC itself. [1]: https://m.littelfuse.com/~/media/electronics/technical_papers/resettable_ptcs/littelfuse_fundamentals_of_resettable_functionality_in_pptc_devices_technical_paper.pdf.pdf https://m.littelfuse.com/~/media/electronics/technical_paper... [2]: https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/text/chapter-1#active_versus_passive_devices https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/text/...
- amelius 2y ago> active is taken to mean electrical control of current flow Is a transformer an active device? Asking because current in one loop can control current in the other loop. From there, are two copper wires an active device?
- adrian_b 2y agoThe current in one transformer loop does not control the current in the other loop. The power from one loop is transferred into the other, there is no control. The same for two copper wires. "Control" means that you can determine the value of the power in some circuit by consuming less power to do this. If you have to use the same power, not less, then you are the provider of power, not someone in control, i.e. this is the difference between bosses and the workers commanded by them. The bosses do not lift heavy parcels themselves, they order to some worker to do that. A device that apparently looks like a transformer but it is an active device is the magnetic amplifier. There are 2 differences from a transformer, the magnetic core is saturable during normal operation (any magnetic core is saturable at a high enough magnetic field, but when that happens in a transformer this means that the transformer has failed, which leads to overcurrents that would destroy the equipment unless a protection is triggered), and the second difference is that the control coil has a very high number of turns, so that a very small current can saturate the magnetic core. In a magnetic amplifier, the output coil is inserted in an AC circuit where the power must be controlled. When the core is not saturated, the impedance of the coil is high and the output AC current is low. When the core is saturated, the impedance of the coil is low and the output AC current is high. Whether the magnetic core is saturated or not is controlled with a very small current and power on the control coil, which makes this an active device. Magnetic amplifiers have been heavily used during WWII, especially by the Germans, who had improved them, and they continued to be used for a few decades after the end of WWII, when USA had captured the German technology, because of their very high reliability, until the transistor amplifiers have become reliable enough.
- bee_rider 2y agoWell, it is just “a step.” Whether or not it is newsworthy… eh, I mean, what is MIT News? A campus newspaper? I’m pretty sure we had articles on particularly big games of capture the flag in mine.
- throawayonthe 2y ago[dead]
- jayyhu 2y agoIt looks like the editors have amended the title of their article since this was initially posted. The original title was just “3D-printed Active Electronics”
- notjulianjaynes 2y agoWhat seems cool about this to me is that they seem to have done it with a plain old FDM printer and copper impregnated PLA. The devices are fairly large (mm scale) so presumably anyone with a $200 ender and the correct filament could print these. I am able to find copper PLA for sale too, although I'm not positive it is what was used in the experiment, and it's kind of pricey (~ $100/kg).
- atoav 2y agoNot to be that guy, but this is a typical situation as it occurs a thousand times per week: 1. Scientists make minor progress as part of a multi-year effort, release a paper, paper features overly optimistic outlook to get future funding 2. Institute marketing department both hypes it up and dumbs it down a little 3. Popular science press picks it up and both hypes it up and dumbs it down a little more 4. Scientific literate readers read it and complain TL;DR: Nothing new under the sun
- jayyhu 2y agoI want to clarify that they actually did build a transistor-like device, and not just hypothesize about it. I missed section 3.2 when I initially skimmed the paper, which demonstrates and shows the results of a working “transistor”. Unfortunately I can’t edit my original post, so apologies for causing any confusion.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- netrap 2y agoThis image shows logic gates they made: https://www.tandfonline.com/cms/asset/5043deae-e79e-45fc-bb7e-060c31599873/nvpp_a_2404157_f0005_oc.jpg https://www.tandfonline.com/cms/asset/5043deae-e79e-45fc-bb7...
- nativeit 2y agoIt’s cool for tinkering, and I think there are lots of potential use-cases for conductive filaments and printing in electronics, but I don’t think transistors are necessary. Silicon crystal development is really already a sort of “additive manufacturing”, and I’m not sure what purpose would be served by re-inventing a method that would be starting so far behind in terms of scale, precision, and cost in relation to traditional semiconductor production (anyway, I assume this idea is broadly for learning/experimentation/the lols, rather than some earnest aspiration for using metal-bearing printer filaments to produce active components).
- mycall 2y agoWhat about the use of power transistors that don't too well as silicon crystals afaik.
- westurner 2y agoFrom https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40759133 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40759133 : > In addition to nanolithography and nanoassembly, there is 3d printing with graphene. And conductive aerogels, and carbon nanotube production at scale From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41210021 : > There's already conductive graphene 3d printing filament (and far less conductive graphene). Looks like 0.8ohm*cm may be the least resistive graphene filament available: https://www.google.com/search?q=graphene+3d+printer+filament+ohms https://www.google.com/search?q=graphene+3d+printer+filament... > Are there yet CNT or Twisted SWCNT Twisted Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube substitutes for copper wiring? Aren't there carbon nanotube superconducting cables? Instead of copper, there are plastic waveguides
- graycat 2y ago[flagged]
- wrsh07 2y agoDid you comment on the wrong post? Or did the link get swapped out on you?
- graycat 2y agoThanks. Don't know what happened: Intended to comment on "Show HN: HN Update – Hourly News Broadcast of Top HN Stories (hnup.date)" at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41893524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41893524 but apparently somehow posted to "3D-Printed Active Electronics (news.mit.edu)" at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41893524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41893524 Just deleted the post at "3D-Printed Active Electronics (news.mit.edu)" and submitted the post to "Show HN: HN Update – Hourly News Broadcast of Top HN Stories (hnup.date)" Thanks.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lmpdev 2y agoI thought resettable fuses were already polymer based? PPTCs are just plastic and metal with no semiconductors afaik Is this actually an MIT article?
- curtisf 2y agoFrom the paper, > This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first report of fully 3D-printed resettable fuses. I think unique the contribution is that the entire circuit -- active and passive -- can be made with this one single material. Normally, you need to use many different materials and chemical baths to make a circuit with active components, but using this metal-polymer mix, you can _just_ deposit the metal and you are finished.
- peter_d_sherman 2y ago>"They saw an interesting phenomenon in the material they were using, a polymer filament doped with copper nanoparticles. If they passed a large amount of electric current into the material, it would exhibit a huge spike in resistance but would return to its original level shortly after the current flow stopped." This is interesting -- large amounts of current being associated with increased resistance... I have never seen or read about something like that with respect to other electronic components or systems. It would be an interesting experiment to see if this effect could be simulated, and if so, under what conditions, in non-nanoparticle standard regular-sized electrical components... I'm guessing (but not knowing!) that you'd you'd need a very high amount of current (like something from a car battery), but at a very low voltage, like maybe 0.1 or 0.01 volts (or less), and maybe like a very thin long wire made of some mostly-conducitive material, and then maybe something at some scale or low voltage if the experimenter was lucky... Anyway, large current associated with increased resistance... I've never heard of that one before, except I suppose if the current heats the electrical path so much that it destroys it... which would be different for different materials, voltages, cross-section of conductors, temperatures, etc., etc. I'd assume that wouldn't happen at the nanoscale and/or in a switching semiconductor... but perhaps I might be wrong on some level...
- elictronic 2y agoLightbulbs? High amount of current increases resistance.
- peter_d_sherman 2y agoExcellent point! (More broadly, a high amount of current through a wire in a vacuum tube, where the diameter of the wire is too small to carry all of the current without overheating in air, when placed in a vacuum tube, such as a lightbulb, will increase resistance with increased current (while turning part of the electricity into light/heat/radio waves/other forms of radiation, etc., etc.)) But, an excellent point!
- torginus 2y agolarge amount of electric current into the material, it would exhibit a huge spike in resistance considering the low melting point of these 3d printing plastics, they probably melted the wire.
- reader9274 2y agoThis is like posting "Landing on Mars" and all you did was catch a reusable rocket.
- dools 2y agoI think the "step towards being an inter planetary species" as a result of catching a re-usable rocket might have merit in that it makes construction of things in outer space easier (although that's probably a charitable interpretation of the statement). My take on the Spacex is Mars habitation project is that Musk will put a bunch of edgelords on Mars, and then not really be able to follow up with adequate supply lines and the operation will be offline for a hundred years or so while the climate settles down. The people who live on Mars will then have been there alone for a century and in the 2100s we will send a follow up mission with hilarious consequences.
- peepeepoopoo87 2y agoThunderf00t, is that you?
- dools 2y agoHaha I had never heard of that dude, but I like the look of his content thanks! BTW you can tell I'm not Thunderf00t because he says that "the taxpayer" paid $3 billion. I would never use "taxpayer funding" language, I would only ever call it public money (because Treasury creates money when it spends).
- exe34 2y agoby that logic tax should be zero?
- dools 2y agoNot really, if there was no tax there would be no money. The most succinct way that I have found to express the relationship between taxation and spending is that spending at the federal level is constrained by aggregate spending this year, not tax receipts last year.
- mikewarot 2y agoLong, long ago, Tunnel Diodes were going to usher in an era of ultra-fast computing because their negative resistance region allowed for current gain in the simple 2 pin device. It didn't work out for most of it, but does show that you can do logic without transistors. Think of these as incredibly slow negative resistance devices. Computing with them might be possible, barely. But sometimes that's all you need.
- AyyEye 2y agoThey arent dead! Diy 8ghz (sampling) oscilloscope with tunneling diodes https://hackaday.io/project/167292-8-ghz-sampling-oscilloscope/ https://hackaday.io/project/167292-8-ghz-sampling-oscillosco...
- torginus 2y agoWhile mentally stimulating, this sounds practically not very useful. They're using a copper-doped polymer for printing, which probably has way worse properties anything we make PCB traces out of. And the 3D part is gimmicky. We have built electronic systems of monstrous complexity just with planar printers. Wake me up when someone build a system that can reliably make PCBs at home, with placing components, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg, and is cheap and easy to run.
- DoctorOetker 2y agoIt would be nice to pattern diodes and semiconductors on PCB without components as follows: etch circuit layout of a copper layer, mask the traces so they don't oxidize, then heat the PCB to have unmasked copper turn into Cu2O (cuprous oxide, a semiconductor). Anyone seriously attempting this should make sure they understand solid state physics, and at a minimum understand diffusion length of charge carriers and the different type of contacts: Ohmic, Schottky ( for example https://lampz.tugraz.at/~hadley/psd/lectures20/contacts.pdf https://lampz.tugraz.at/~hadley/psd/lectures20/contacts.pdf ) Performance will be horrible, but in some situations constructing and inspecting the device oneself can be paramount ( bootstrapping a secure computational platform, implementing formal verifier associated to a cryptocurrency, ... )
- RachelM71948937 2y ago[dead]
- LASR 2y agoI am a fan of 3D printing. And I think you can probably get some circuit traces 3D printed for some niche applications. But active electronics? That's a huge stretch. But more importantly, the economics just doesn't make sense. Components already cost fractions of a cent. Small-run PCB prototyping is like <$25 for 5 boards or so. "A step toward..." Maybe. But why?
- seanthemon 2y agoin places where you have a 3d printer but you don't have an active shipping line that can easily reach you. You can easily prototype things or build electronics. I also don't see this as the final result, printers could be purpose built for this to speed up production and make size smaller
- dsv3099i 2y agoI suppose, but the 3D printer requires consumable inputs. So without active shipping that printer is going to have a very limited lifetime. There’s always a corner case, like having to 3D print on Mars or something, but thats a niche of a niche.
- dotnet00 2y agoBeing able to just print some simple electronics components would massively simplify iteration and distribution of DIY things, especially as auto-filament changer systems become more accessible. As one example, being able to print a transistor or two and some traces would allow for making projects which embed something like an ESP32 dev board much more compact without having to wait for weeks for custom PCBs to ship from China. It's always weird to see people making arguments like this on a forum titled "Hacker News"
- shultays 2y agoI think it is valid to point of feasibility of something. For fast prototyping there are already breadboards or PCBs that you can just solder wires on, so it doesn't really help with tracing PCB lines. Printing transistors or other things that are good and compact enough to use, even for prototyping, seems to be indeed a stretch
- gtzi 2y agoAlso you may want to take a look at https://www.botfactory.co https://www.botfactory.co
- 9859260851 2y ago[flagged]
- wkat4242 2y agoInteresting idea but millimeter-scale logic doesn't really have much practical use in this day and age :) but it's s nice proof of concept.
- jayd16 2y agoEven placing traces inside a print and then slotting in IC boards would be useful. Even at mm scale it changes the types of prints that can be done.
- Taniwha 2y agoAh - but it's not just mm scale - it's 3d mm scale - sure it still needs to be smaller but if you can print into volumes rather than just on 2d planes things get interesting
- wkat4242 2y agoYeah, but a GPU would still be the scale of the pentagon :P
- elif 2y agoHmmm not sure I see the advantages of 3d printing vs lithography. I mean, yes, technically, this approach could advance to catch up with lithography. In practice? Yes we are working toward smaller feature size in additive, but we are nowhere close to micro let alone nano scale. If the advantage is "hobbyists can do it" then I would say "hobbyists can eaglecad too" This seems like a detour or speedbump on our existing path toward atom level logic production.
- matthewfelgate 2y agoThis is fascinating. I did thing a while back if it was possible to 3D print primitive electronics.
- joelignaatius 2y ago[dead]