Conductive ink continues to offer tremendous creative promise, but it seems industrialization has been slow in coming. Although a few years old, I found a couple of beautiful and creative videos showing off conductive ink: Apparently this video below was … Continue reading conductive ink videos
Several technology trends are coming together – digitally printed conductive inks, conductive adhesives for pick’n’place machines, ultra small LEDs and other electronic components – to make injection-molded structural electronics very interesting for the lighting industry. The immediate application is obviously … Continue reading tactotek injection molded electronics
Quick update on Idaho-based startup Rohinni, which I first posted two years ago. They seem to be making progress, albeit still in stealth mode on their product. They have a full staff, full board, and new office. Not much information on … Continue reading rohinni
Voxel8 is a Boston-based, Harvard spin-out startup that is integrating the printing of conductive materials directly into 3D printing. The future is pretty obvious at this point: I’ve previously mentioned conductive ink and 3D printing — combining the two is an obvious step … Continue reading voxel8
Along similar lines of work such as John Rogers is working on: And here is the background (I believe) for the video: 29.02.16 – EPFL researchers have developed conductive tracks that can be bent and stretched up to four times their original … Continue reading liquid metal stretchable electronics
Via Digital Arts: Microsoft demo’d a small research project showing how consumers may one day print and assemble electronics. What I found interesting were the two suppliers mentioned: Mitsubishi Imaging is Mitsubishi’s commercial printing division and they are now advertising a … Continue reading microsoft, mitsubishi, and 3m
Via Core77: A very fun interactive installation from retail design firm Dalziel + Pow at the 2015 London Retail Design Expo. Daziel + Pow silk screened Bare Conductive ink and graphics onto a plywood wall surface and used the Ototo capactive touch … Continue reading dalziel + pow
Without a doubt in my mind, the future for the lighting industry will be heavily based on roll-to-roll electronics assembly processes. The use of individually assembled printed circuit boards makes little sense for many lighting applications, such as many common linear … Continue reading bosch rexroth – roll to roll plastic electronics
Katia Vega is a researcher experimenting with “Beauty Technology”. Her Kinisi project is awesome: Vega is using conductive ink to apply LEDs and some sort of movement switches directly to the skin, allowing the LEDs to be controlled by the wink of … Continue reading katia vega’s beauty technology
Via FastCompany, Idaho-based startup Rohinni is demoing a new application of LED lighting they are calling “Lightpaper”. Rohinni is using a mixture of ultra-small LED die suspended in conductive ink: In its current state, Lightpaper is manufactured by mixing ink and tiny LEDs … Continue reading lightpaper by rohinni
Sun-Tec is a small Swiss manufacturer of transparent SMD (surface mount device) films using either transparent conductive layers or printed conductive traces. At this point, I’m guessing most lighting people have seen the trick where LEDs appear to float in … Continue reading sun-tec
Another way conductive inks are moving towards mainstream applications…this time through low-cost inkjet printing. Continue reading Quickly Prototype Circuits With New Inkjet-Printable Conductive Ink
Plastic Electronic is a German company that makes touch sensitive control panels using integrated, laminated electronics. These sorts of processes might one day be critical for integrating lighting into building materials via low-cost processes. Via the Holst Center’s website. Continue reading plastic electronic
T-Ink is a New York City startup that specializes in conductive inks. According to their description: T-INK, Inc. is a privately held innovative technology company that utilizes proprietary “thinking inks” to enhance products through the creation of unlimited applications in … Continue reading t-ink
At the expo floor for Strategies in Light Europe, I met representatives from DuPont that were showcasing DuPont’s innovations in conductive ink for printed and flexible electronics. Some really amazing stuff they were showing, including conductive inks in silver, copper, … Continue reading DuPont conductive ink for printed electronics
I continue to be fascinated by the potential of electrically-conductive inks for architectural applications. The ability to radically simplify low-voltage DC-based lighting and sensing systems by integrating printed electrical traces directly into architectural materials offers a innovation path towards … Continue reading bare conductive
A very inspiring TED Talk from Leah Buechley, head of the High-Low Tech research group at MIT’s Media Lab: “How to “Sketch” with Electronics” Buechley uses copper- or silver-based conductive ink to draw circuits on paper. She also demonstrates how … Continue reading sketching with LEDs
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