Conductive filament

[Geoff]

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.

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

[Feign]

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

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?

[CaptainObvious]

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?

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

[Feign]

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

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.