Tech Forecast for 3D Printing - The Homemade mAcrochip

If anyone was asked 100 years ago if it was possible to build a physical structure out of thin air, they would say no. Today, when you look at a 3D printer with the eyes of a person 100 years ago, that is exactly what appears to be happening. A design (a physical object) materializes right before your eyes.

We are sitting in a time that is evolving faster than most people today can even grasp, but with that progress we can at times get so lost in the nitty gritty details we forget to look up and see the new horizon right in front of us.

Enter the mAcro-chip.

The purpose of this post is to give all reprappers a challenge, one that you will not regret. This challenge is posted on this open source forum so that the full merit of the idea stays in your hands, and since it can now no longer be proved unique or novel since it is in the public domain, it is ultimately "unpatentable", which means that the rights to the idea remain with the people.

The challenge rolls out in a few stages:

Challenge 1: Print a resistor
Challenge 2: Print a capacitor
Challenge 3: Print a transistor
Challenge 4: Print the equivalent of a 555 timer that works!

Considerations and Principle of a mAcro-chip:
We all know that a traditional microchip is very small indeed, and it would be near impossible to get the kind of resolution one would need for a 3d printed version. So the simple premise we start with is by altering the scale of the most common microchip to get a "starting point" for this non-existent technology. Imagine printing your own 555 timer that is maybe 100 times larger than a silicon based 555 timer. If you needed an 741 opamp you could print it out in few hours.

If you say this is impossible then you better do your homework, because there are a few examples on the web of a 555 and a 741 made from discrete components. This is enough proof to show that it can be adapted to 3d printing.

Obviously the initial performance characteristics would not be exactly the same, but the advantage would be that you get to print and change the inner working of your own mAcrochips.

Eventually as the 3D printing process improves, resolution will increase and the scale of your home chips can be reduced.

So lets take a resistor as an example. Lets say the first 3d printed resistor was 50mm x 50mm surface area. Even if it was that big, it would prove that the principle worked. With copper printing and conductive ink printing, a zig zag of lines could be printed with varying thickness to match the resistance needed between the two terminals. As you get to invent better ways to build a printed resistor, materials will get better, size will drop, and you'll be able to print a resistor of any resistance and within the same surface area.

As the tech is shared and built upon, eventually the 3D printed capacitor will be born, the 3D printed transistor, and then eventually single layer mAcrochips, then ultimately home made multilayer mAcrochips. In a decade or so you will be able to print your own fully working computer from home made from recycled waste materials you find around the house.

Entire circuits will be made this way from simple transistor circuits for monitoring light levels, water levels, sensors, etc all the way up to full computers, etc. The big difference is that you will make them at home with the power, beauty and flexibility of additive engineering.

Now compare that to the inflexible and highly expensive engineering systems of silicon wafer technology. This old and cumbersome technology requires huge furnaces, clean rooms, chemical doping knowledge and a multi-million investment to make into a success.

The big question that noone asked is this... Do microchips really have to be that small? If you can print a larger version of your favourite microchip as a 3D printed mAcrochip and it does 95% the same function, and you can make as many as like for yourself at home, why wouldn't you want to?

Now it is your hands. Hello mAcrochip!

Leon H. Franken
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www.compusolve.co.za

Printing stuff out of thin air is currently impossible, most current additive manufacturing processes do not directly transform air into workable parts.

Now as far as electronic components go, resistors are trivial, the resistance of conductive ink is fairly high. The hard part is making something that isn't a resistor.

Transistors have already been done. Only problem is that they are glacially slow, they take around 5 minutes to switch.

With proper integration, an ultra-low frequency 555 timer should be possible.

What is the point?

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_______________________________________
Waitaki 3D Printer

lee1 Wrote:
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>
> The big question that noone asked is this... Do
> microchips really have to be that small?

That is an important question, and I think the answer is "yes". They do have to be small.

In your considerations you overlook cost, as do other people looking to make controllers from relays for example. Cost is somewhat proportional to mass of material, as well as the degree of processing required. If you have a big feature size, you need more materials. I can make an 8 bit CPU from 200 relays, but it would be much bigger, use more power, and be more expensive, and much less reliable.

Ironically I think that 3D printing is only made possible by these multi-billion fabs making cheap chips. Replicating this with a DIY version is virtually impractical. The design of RepRap has distilled all the key work into a part that is likely never possible to make in a self-replicating fashion.

I expect that any truly self-replicating technology will be based on biology, not transistors. Since biology already is doing self-replication, we just need to adapt it.

lee1,
I think I can see where you are going with this, things dont need to be small, they were not small in the recent
past, building blocks of discreet componants can do some amazing things, they did in the recent past and still can.

If I had the time I would be up for this, I know this work is being done behind closed doors and funded, so making it non patentable is good, and by giving it focus and direction may just lead to something?.

P.S what about a work group

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Random Precision

Quote
waitaki
What is the point?

Will Stevens put it very nicely in a comment in this thread:

Quote
Will Stevens
There is the practical goal of making a cheap, autonomous, and versatile personal manufacturing system. If that is the objective then the number of vitamin parts and the complexity of the machine and its control system are irrelevant unless they affect the price and performance of the machine, and the range of people who have access to it.

The self-replicating or closed-cycle manufacturing system goal is a separate one (but with some overlaps in the realisation), which may or may not turn out to be feasible or useful, but I find it interesting from a pure science perspective regardless of whether it is useful or not. For this goal, the number of vitamin parts, and the complexity of construction of both the mechanical part of the machine and the control system are fundamental considerations. There are reprappers who are interested in one or the other or both of these goals (I'm interested in both).

bobc's comment should not give you the impression that people interested in relay controllers "overlook" cost out of ignorance. We are interested in pushing the limits of what can be printed, and therefore cost and reliability are not high priorities. You find similar sentiment in many other groundbreaking areas of 3D printing, whether it be printable firearms or printable printer designs like RepRap Morgan, RepRap Simpson, or Rhombot.

A lot of people have looked at printable electronics and/or "low tech" controllers for 3D printers. Here's a few links:
Carbomorph
VORBAT Challenge
MakerBot Printable Transistors and OLEDs