The Google-backed venture Play-i will start shipping robots to future programming geniuses in the summer of 2014, the company has announced. The colorful, round little robots–dubbed Bo and Yana–receive commands from a smartphone or tablet through a programming interface app designed for children ages 5 and up. The capabilities of Bo and Yana are pretty […]
3D printers are great if you want to print small plastic widgets. But what if you want to print something a bit smarter, like an electronic circuit board? Australia and U.S.-based startup Cartesian Co. wants to extend the principle of affordable 3D printing to PCBs – and they’ve taken to Kickstarter to raise $30,000 to get their printer prototype, called The Ex1, to market.
They’re not claiming to have come up with the first ever circuit board printer. But they do claim to be first to have squeezed the price of the tech to maker-friendly levels. ”This is the first ever circuit board printer available to hobbyists,” the startup tells TechCrunch. “It uses an inkjet additive technique not previously available for under $50,000.”
The Ex1 is available to a (tiny) handful of early bird Kickstarter backers for $899, rising to $1,199 and then $1,499. After all those limited offer pledges have been bagged the price-tag floor will be $1,999. Still a damn sight cheaper than $50,000.
The Ex1 offers a step up from breadboards, in terms of being more flexible about what you build a circuit on. As for etching your own PCB – that can be cheap but is also a pretty fiddly process. So the Ex1 is intending to improve the convenience of electronic prototyping, while also keeping the cost to a relatively affordable level (vs pro printers at least). It’s priced at a level for schools and workshops to get more kids and makers tinkering with electronics.
“We see this doing to electronics what 3D printers have done to mechanical prototyping. 3D printers had been around for decades before they became popular, but only became cheap enough for everyone to have in the last couple of years. This explosion in the access to cutting edge technology is what has driven us to create a completely new breed of printers,” it adds.
The Ex1 layers silver nano particles onto paper – or any suitable surface – via an inkjet printing process to rapidly create a circuit board. It actually lays down two chemicals separately, one on top of the other. The two then react to form the conductive silver traces.
The startup has been experimenting with printing circuits on a variety of substrates – including paper, plastics, stickers, fabrics, silicone and even materials such as wood, glass and ceramic. It is also developing coatings to “allow virtually any surface to be printed on”.
What about adding components to the printed PCBs to create fully fledged electronics? The startup says components can be soldiered onto its printed circuits or added using conductive glue – with the idea being to keep the whole process simple, allowing for owners of the printers to build stuff even if they don’t own a soldering iron.
The startup is also aiming to keep things simple on the PCB design side – its software will allow images to be imported and printed, and includes presets and tools to help lower the barrier to entry.
“The average user doesn’t need to be a CAD master, they can just go online and download one of a million designs that someone else has already made for their purpose. Our printer is just as easy as this, letting anyone make things they could have never even imagined before. The infrastructure for this already exists, and we look forward to working with a large and motivated community to make it even easier,” it says.
“We want everyone to be able to enjoy the future of making things. That’s why we’re making it easy for hackerspaces and schools to get and use our printers. Imagine a classroom, where the kids aren’t just learning about electronics, but making electronics!”
How has Cartesian Co. got this far? It’s come out of iLab, a Brisbane-based incubator, whose program includes initial equity, office space, and mentoring.
From what I’ve seen, it seems that VTech scored a homerun with their
large lineup of colorful, educational and entertaining dinosaur/vehicle
hybrids. Any toy that dares to teach kids about the long-clawed
Therizinosaurus is a winner in my book!
The proliferation of tablets have made using digital textbooks a more feasible choice than they were even a handful of years ago, and with them has come a growing number of textbook-related digital bookstores. Kno is one such company, and following rumors of such, Intel has officially acquired the startup, boosting its own Education business. […]
The age of robots isn’t just coming. It’s already arrived – none of us really noticed. Truth is, most of us have probably interacted with a robot very recently. The interaction just didn’t register, claims former Willow Garage Rsearcher Leila Takayama, because we expect too much from machines.
About a year ago, researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital used video games to help children deal with out-of-control emotions, teaching them to regulate and reign in their anger. Today, I’d like to ask a very simple question: could the same tactics be applied to adults?
I’ve long held that video games are a powerful educational tool in the right hand, and now one more organization is proving that notion correct. In a collaboration with EA and Maxis, non-profit Glasslab recently finished developing an education and formative assessment mod known as SimCityEDU.
Video games have had a huge impact on Western society, of that there can be no doubt. But just how have they impacted our lives and changed our culture? Charlie Brooker – a satirist and games critic from the UK – is going to find out with a new documentary titled "How Video Games Changed the World."
Turns out, a night at the pub with some friends might not be so idle a pastime as one might think. Quite the contrary: According to Oxford University Professor Robin Dunbar, it’s absolutely integral to men’s health, and they should definitely make an effort to go more often.
Word’s been floating around the blogosphere lately that in Brazil, you’re probably not going to be buying yourself a PS4 unless you’re fabulously wealthy. For some odd reason, although Sony’s console only costs about $400 here, it’s retailing for almost two grand there. Wait, what?
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