Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/871322
70 The PCB Magazine • September 2017 Conclusion PCBs today are optimized and ubiquitous. They can be mass produced, created relative- ly quickly, and are a proven, reliable product. They do have their limitations, though. They are process-intensive, one-offs are not necessar- ily economical, and they produce a lot of waste, which creates extra expense to manufacture in the U.S. Printed circuit structures are the evo- lution of the PCB and 3D printing industries. They have several distinct advantages over PCBs in that they greatly reduce process steps, one-offs and customization are easy because of the DDM process, and since they are primarily additive, there is very little waste. However, there are still some obstacles pres- ent. PCS as it is today would struggle with large volumes because the speeds are not yet there. Strength of fabricated parts is another obstacle in the way of PCS. 3D printed parts are not as strong as bulk properties, so consideration must be taken into the design of the PCS. Using the methods described in this paper, these two is- sues were addressed and improvements have been made. A more than 2x speed increase was realized through the use of spaghetti printing which also yielded a stronger, smoother part. Another method of increasing strength utilized a laser to reflow already printed plastic creating better line-by-line and layer adhesion. Com- bining these methods, stronger, more dura- ble printed circuit structures can be fabricated much faster. PCB References 1. Deffenbaugh, Paul, et al. "Fully 3D Print- ed 2.4 GHz Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Antenna." Inter- national Symposium on Microelectronics, Vol. 2013. No. 1. International Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging Society, 2013. 2. Nassar, Ibrahim T., et al. "A high-efficien- cy, electrically-small, 3-D machined-substrate antenna fabricated with fused deposition mod- eling and 3-D printing." 2014 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium (RWS). IEEE, 2014. 3. Church, Kenneth H., et al. "Advanced printing for microelectronic packaging." sub- mitted for publication in IPC APEX EXPO Con- ference Proceedings, 2014. 4. Arnal, Nicholas, et al. "3D multi-layer additive manufacturing of a 2.45 GHz RF front end." 2015 IEEE MTT-S International Micro- wave Symposium. IEEE, 2015. 5. Church, Kenneth H., et al. "Printed cir- cuit structures, the evolution of printed circuit boards." IPC APEX EXPO Conference Proceed- ings, 2013. 6. Deffenbaugh, Paul. "3D printed electromag- netic transmission and electronic structures fabri- cated on a single platform using advanced process integration techniques." Ph. D. dissertation, Elect. & Comput. Eng., UTEP, El Paso, Texas, 2014. 7. Ahn, Sung-Hoon, et al. "Anisotropic ma- terial properties of fused deposition modeling ABS." Rapid Prototyping Journal 8.4 (2002): 248-257. 9. Torrado, Angel R., and David A. Roberson. "Failure analysis and anisotropy evaluation of 3D-printed tensile test specimens of different geometries and print raster patterns." Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention 16.1 (2016): 154-164. This paper was originally presented at the IPC 2017 APEX EXPO conference and was published in the proceedings. Samuel LeBlanc is a marketing engineer with nScrypt Inc. Paul Deffenbaugh, Ph.D, is a senior scientist with nScrypt Inc. Kenneth Church, Ph.D, is CEO of nScrypt Inc. Jacob Denkins was formerly an application engineer with nScrypt Inc. 3D PRINTED ELECTRONICS FOR PRINTED CIRCUIT STRUCTURES