![]() The first two batches of $1,199 early-bird printers have already been sold, as well as the $1,799 ‘first in line’ lot, however for $1,499, you can reserve your very own second-batch Voltera V-One, which is planned to ship in January 2016. If you’re interested, be sure to contribute to their Kickstarter campaign, which has already raised over $158,000 from 214 backers, $88,000 more than their original goal. In addition to prototypes, the V-One can be used for small-batch runs, and in time, the company hopes to be used by bigger companies for prototyping as well as creating actual products.įor now, the printer will come with a cartridge of conductive ink, insulating ink, solder paste, solder wire, blank boards in a few sizes, a sample pack of template boards, as well as cables and tools to get started. ![]() The technology still requires refinement, and is not exactly comparable to fabricated boards-the printed silver ink used by Voltera isn’t the same as the plated copper, however as the company explains “similar to how you can’t compare a 3D printed part to a molded part…both have value for their application”-it is nevertheless a huge step forward for electronics developers. The Voltera V-One is their personalized solution, eliminating the need to pay for stencils, extra shipping or expedition feeds. Co-founders Alroy Almeida, Katarina Ilic, James Pickard and Jesus Zozaya, former engineering students at the University of Waterloo in Canada, tapped into their backgrounds in nanotechnology and mechatronics engineering and have spent the past two years in chemical experimentation, ensuring they hit their benchmarks for conductivity, solderability, and reliability.Īs engineering students, Almeida, Ilic, Pickard and Zozaya more than familiar with the long wait times and high costs of outsourcing their circuit board designs to fabrication houses. That’s not to say that the process of actually developing the V-One was easy. As the company’s description states: “Gerber files go in FR4 boards come out. In addition to printing circuit boards, the V-One is also a solder paste dispenser and can reflow.įor users, the process is deceptively simple: there is only one button, the ink cartridges snap on and of magnetically, and Voltera’s advanced software automatically detects trace intersections and lays down a mask where two traces overlap. ![]() The sleek-looking and desktop-sized Voltera V-One easily prints two-layer circuit boards by laying down a highly conductive, silver nanoparticle ink to create the traces as well as insulating ink, which acts as a mask between layers. Thanks to Voltera, electronics developers will be able to greatly reduce the time it takes to build or order new circuit boards, and much like 3D print designers, go from concept to creation in minutes. It’s an accurate statement: whether it’s fast food, instant coffee, or lightning-fast Internet connections, we expect results right away and hate having to wait. “We’re all part of the ‘Now Generation’,” says Alroy Almeida, co-founder of Voltera, a Canadian startup company that in one day has raised over $158,000 to develop a desktop circuit board printer. If you’re a mechanical engineer or designer, the rapid-prototyping enabled by desktop 3D printing has already changed the speed at which you can create new iterations of your product, however electronic hardware developers often spend weeks or months waiting for custom circuit boards to be manufactured and shipped, and if there are any errors, they have to start again from scratch.
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