Conductive filament

Hi all,
So far I have found only one reseller for conductive filament.
http://www.3d2print.net/shop/product...uctive-1-75mm/
Do you know any other ? Have you tried using this kind of product ?
I'm hoping to try it and simplify electrodeposition but if any of you has tried before and is willing to share experience on it, I'd be glad to hear about it.
AM

That filament does not conduct electricity. The stated resistance is 10^4 Ohms which is 10K Ohms. It is an insulator.

Old Man Emu

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Originally Posted by old man emu

That filament does not conduct electricity. The stated resistance is 10^4 Ohms which is 100K Ohms. It is an insulator.

Old Man Emu

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Bah beat me to it old man... :)

Yeah I looked into this stuff before I even got my printer, I wanted to print the wiring on a quadcopter Dual extrusion style... Conductive on one side, ABS on the other and have intergrated wiring all throughout, but after some research discovered it's not really great for that, apparently you can get a LED light to work off it so I've heard.

One possibility for printing circuitry is to have the conductive filament traces printed in a hollow channel with openings on the outside of the print and a sprue tree connecting all the exposed ends of the conductive filament. After it's done, do an electroplating process on the whole thing (figuring out a way to deal with bubbles) until the channels are filled with the electroplating metal. Cut the sprues off the part and you have a solid metal trace circuit integrated into the print!

Of course, that's assuming that the conductive filament is conductive enough to take plating a good distance from the point of contact.

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Originally Posted by Feign

One possibility for printing circuitry is to have the conductive filament traces printed in a hollow channel with openings on the outside of the print and a sprue tree connecting all the exposed ends of the conductive filament. After it's done, do an electroplating process on the whole thing (figuring out a way to deal with bubbles) until the channels are filled with the electroplating metal. Cut the sprues off the part and you have a solid metal trace circuit integrated into the print!

Of course, that's assuming that the conductive filament is conductive enough to take plating a good distance from the point of contact.

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If you scroll up and read the rest of the thread, you will find you don't actually need to assume. ;)

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Originally Posted by Geoff

If you scroll up and read the rest of the thread, you will find you don't actually need to assume. ;)

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Hah, yeah now I feel a little silly, that being the point of the thread all along... So by what you're saying, I take it that 10kOhms is way too much resistance to accept electroplating?

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Originally Posted by Feign

Hah, yeah now I feel a little silly, that being the point of the thread all along... So by what you're saying, I take it that 10kOhms is way too much resistance to accept electroplating?

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That and if your are going through all the trouble of electroplating a print you may just as well run actual cables through it.

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Originally Posted by CaptainObvious

That and if your are going through all the trouble of electroplating a print you may just as well run actual cables through it.

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I can think of situations where running wire without stopping the print multiple times would get very difficult. (Electric motor coils for instance)

How conductive does a plastic have to be in order for it to inherently take electroplating? I've been looking into Polyaniline, which has a resistance of roughly .14 Ohm/cm (varying widely depending on how it's made), but it also has a melting point of 300 deg C and seems to lose it's conductivity slowly in storage after it's made. So not a good material for filament in any case.

As a rule of thumb i'd say you need at least 1Amp (as an order of magnitude) to actually do something. So yeah, i feel a bit silly with 10k ohms.

I don't know if this is just a stupid question or not, but would that sprayable conductivity solution work for creating 3D printable objects that are conductive?

I have never used it (that's my disclaimer):

CuPro-Cote Coating