MIT Demonstrates Fully 3D Printed, Active Electronic Components
Submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/mit-demonstrates-fully-3d-printed-active-electronic-components/
Submitted 1 month ago by cm0002@lemmy.world to 3dprinting@lemmy.world
https://hackaday.com/2025/02/19/mit-demonstrates-fully-3d-printed-active-electronic-components/
IMALlama@lemmy.world 1 month ago
This is pretty cool.
This is the how-they-done-it paragraph. Essentially, they printed mechanical logic gates by taking advantage of a conductive filament that grows/shrinks as it heats and cools. Cool!
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 1 month ago
$2.15/g, oof ouch owie
papalonian@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Of course that’s insanely expensive compared to our economy packs of standard PLA, but consider how much conductive filament one would need in comparison to normal filament for a project.
I’m aware that everything is in the realm of hypotheticals and prototypes, but even if the final product is significantly more expensive than standard filament, it’s not like you’ll need to be able to print entire parts out of it, just the electric traces.
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 1 month ago
So this is a 3D printed PTC thermistor. Very cool and potentially extremely useful for measuring temperatures within a housing which has never before been able to be done to my knowledge. This is potentially awesome for embedding in medical devices which by regulations cannot be above a specific temperature while in contact with the body.
That said, there is nothing “active” about it. Thermistors are, by definition, passive electronic components. Actives amplify, rectify, or supply electric energy while passives consume, store, and release supplied energy.
HewlettHackard@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Couldn’t you build an amplifier by using a thin wire that heats up a larger wire? If you size the large wire to minimize self heating, then a small current would cause the thin wire to act as a heater, switching the large current.