Manufacturing & Prototyping

{videobox}bBD_9RWm6GE{/videobox}

3D Printing Electronic, Optical, and Biological Interconnect Devices

Richard Hague, a professor at the UK's University of Nottingham and Director of the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Additive Manufacturing, discusses the direction and current developments in additive manufacturing and 3D printing and how the research center is leading the way on many of these developments. One current project involves 3D printing molded interconnect devices with integrated electronic circuits. A promising technique is reactive jetting, whereby instead of depositing polymers in the form of a solution, the monomer and a catalyst are deposited separately to induce the polymerization in situ, usually post-deposition.