Conductive plastic for 3D printers:

Now it is possible to make circuit boards with wiring using 3D printers:

http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/electrified-plastic-for-printers-114120501223_1.html

Originally posted by sonhouse
Now it is possible to make circuit boards with wiring using 3D printers:

http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/electrified-plastic-for-printers-114120501223_1.html

Interesting. It remains to be seen how reliable it is, and whether it conducts as well as traditional materials. But then again, those may not be as critical as in mass production. If you want to print your own circuit board for, say, your private home security project, you can afford to print one or two extra, and its computation speed isn't going to be critical; building it just the way you want it is. It'll be interesting to see how this gets used.

If some place like the surface of Mars has useful raw materials, it would be spiffy to send a 3D printer there and have it build a habitat for future human colonists.

Originally posted by Paul Dirac II
If some place like the surface of Mars has useful raw materials, it would be spiffy to send a 3D printer there and have it build a habitat for future human colonists.

They already sent one to the ISS.

I programmed a 3D printer to use local soil as a raw material to perpetually print identical 3D printers to itself complete with a copy of the same program to print more. They are now billions of them in my back yard multiplying out of control and now they are spreading like a cancer all over the place far beyond my back yard and they just keep on spreading.
They are already mutating (their program ) and evolving; fulling every niche and becoming ever more adapted and efficient at reproduction.
Some have evolved to hitch a ride on ships and aircraft as stowaways.
Nothing can stop them now.
We are all going to die.
I apologize for that -didn't think that one through.

Originally posted by humy
I programmed a 3D printer to use local soil as a raw material to perpetually print identical 3D printers to itself complete with a copy of the same program to print more. They are now billions of them in my back yard multiplying out of control and now they are spreading like a cancer all over the place far beyond my back yard and they just keep on spreading.
...[text shortened]... stop them now.
We are all going to die.
I apologize for that -didn't think that one through.

I wish you had done it on Mars instead. 😠