Voltera V-One Makes Circuit Boards in Minutes
Designing and Prototyping electronic circuit boards is no easy task and involves many hours of design and development of layouts and populating the board with components. But one small layout mistake can ruin all your work and you have to go through the entire process again. Voltera V-One aims to change this with conductive ink printing system and will make your prototyping an easy task.
Until now there has been no quick and inexpensive way to simple push a button to see if an electronic circuit idea works. The team at Voltera claims that this is what the V-One is all about: a simply operated system that produces prototype circuit boards in fewer steps, at lower-cost, and with all of the ease and convenience of other modern-day rapid prototyping systems.
According to the team, Voltera V-One is the first conductive ink printer that goes further than simply printing single layer circuits on paper like some other printers. The V-One is also claimed capable of printing electrically-separated two layer circuits onto industry standard circuit board substrate, FR4 (Flame Retardant fibre glass epoxy), which, according to its makers, is a first in a machine of this size and price.
In detail, the team says that prototyping is achieved by putting a blank board or template board on the print platform, importing the appropriate design files, and then hitting the print button. It is never quite easy with anything, and the creators add the disclaimer that print time is subject to change with an increase in dimensions or intricacy of the selected design.
Given this, it is claimed that a relatively standard layout such as that of an Arduino board should print in around 15 to 20 minutes. Add to this 30 minutes for the ink to dry, and you have a total time from pushing the print button to finished prototype circuit board of less than an hour.
The 2 layer circuit printing that's one of the claimed points of difference for this printer is a little more complex. It involves swapping out the magnetically-attached print head that supplies the conductive ink., for another head that dispenses a liquid insulating substance. Then, when print is once more selected, the on board software works out where the circuit tracks from each of the layers will overlap, and then applies a mask in those places using the insulating substance. To compete the last layer, the conductive ink head is then reattached and the software finishes applying the tracks of conductive ink.
One other important feature is that V-One's designed to automatically lay down solder paste on the pads to which components are attached and then solidify that paste by baking the board. As for the design software itself, the popularity of Gerber file format prompted V-One design team to provide for the input of these files to the Voltera system. The team hopes to also support other flavors to this software, including CadSoft EAGLE, Altium CircuitMaker, Upverter, and KiCad by the time the V-One hits the market.
Voltera V-One has been launched on Kickstarter, where the team hopes to muster enough support. The creators hope to ship the first early bid run in September 2015, followed by another early bid shipment in January 2016. The team has also added the more useful templates for the common Arduino Uno and Mega development boards, which will be shipped pre-drilled and pre-cut. The team also aims to produce templates for Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, Spark Core.
Designing and Prototyping electronic circuit boards is no easy task and involves many hours of design and development of layouts and populating the board with components. But one small layout mistake can ruin all your work and you have to go through the entire process again. Voltera V-One aims to change this with conductive ink printing system and will make your prototyping an easy task.
Until now there has been no quick and inexpensive way to simple push a button to see if an electronic circuit idea works. The team at Voltera claims that this is what the V-One is all about: a simply operated system that produces prototype circuit boards in fewer steps, at lower-cost, and with all of the ease and convenience of other modern-day rapid prototyping systems.
According to the team, Voltera V-One is the first conductive ink printer that goes further than simply printing single layer circuits on paper like some other printers. The V-One is also claimed capable of printing electrically-separated two layer circuits onto industry standard circuit board substrate, FR4 (Flame Retardant fibre glass epoxy), which, according to its makers, is a first in a machine of this size and price.
In detail, the team says that prototyping is achieved by putting a blank board or template board on the print platform, importing the appropriate design files, and then hitting the print button. It is never quite easy with anything, and the creators add the disclaimer that print time is subject to change with an increase in dimensions or intricacy of the selected design.
Given this, it is claimed that a relatively standard layout such as that of an Arduino board should print in around 15 to 20 minutes. Add to this 30 minutes for the ink to dry, and you have a total time from pushing the print button to finished prototype circuit board of less than an hour.
The 2 layer circuit printing that's one of the claimed points of difference for this printer is a little more complex. It involves swapping out the magnetically-attached print head that supplies the conductive ink., for another head that dispenses a liquid insulating substance. Then, when print is once more selected, the on board software works out where the circuit tracks from each of the layers will overlap, and then applies a mask in those places using the insulating substance. To compete the last layer, the conductive ink head is then reattached and the software finishes applying the tracks of conductive ink.
One other important feature is that V-One's designed to automatically lay down solder paste on the pads to which components are attached and then solidify that paste by baking the board. As for the design software itself, the popularity of Gerber file format prompted V-One design team to provide for the input of these files to the Voltera system. The team hopes to also support other flavors to this software, including CadSoft EAGLE, Altium CircuitMaker, Upverter, and KiCad by the time the V-One hits the market.
Voltera V-One has been launched on Kickstarter, where the team hopes to muster enough support. The creators hope to ship the first early bid run in September 2015, followed by another early bid shipment in January 2016. The team has also added the more useful templates for the common Arduino Uno and Mega development boards, which will be shipped pre-drilled and pre-cut. The team also aims to produce templates for Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, Spark Core.
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