Monday, April 12, 2010

Electrically Conductive PLA

I know the subject of my visit to the APEX expo might be getting a little old. It just was one of those times you had to be there to experience it, and the valuable contacts made.

One such contact was the chemist I met in one booth. Seems the firm he works for worked with various forms of plastic compounds including a super electrically insulating cousin of PLA.

Our conversation was about the RepRap project, making or printing pcb boards etc. So we talked about the possibility of removing the insulating properties of his material, and doping it to become electrically conductive. Can you say “Electrically Conductive PLA” to print out circuits? He took down his notes on the subject, and hopefully will follow up as a “Noob”

The seed has been planted. I know with all my other projects this must be passed on so others might water, and bring the process to maturity. My hope with this post is that enough attention will be gathered and Adrian and Vik will find the emails, keeping them from the spam bucket.

NO SPAM !

3 comments:

  1. How electrically conductive would the PLA need to be for you to print circuits? I'm a chemist (as well as a new makerbot operator) and I've seen some interested graphite and carbon black filled plastics with decent conductivity. If you're interested, send me an e-mail with what you'd need and I'll look into it (sskaye_at_gmail.com).

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  2. Do keep me posted on this!

    Vik :v)

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