Why print plastic when you could print liquid glass?

I've been looking at this product for a few months now [nanopool.biz] (full scale availability in the UK in early 2010) and I've also been thinking of maybe building a reprap since I heard about it though I probably won't have the time for it.

I thought wouldn't it be amazing if you could print this out of an inkjet print cartridge. It would take a while, but worth it. You wouldn't need metal bits to make another, glass would be a good material to print wires within and a material suitable to an end product.

Greetings all,

This material appears to be a (very!) thin coating, rather than a bulk material.

It certainly sounds interesting, but I'm always wary of announcements that are high on hype and low on details and specifics (where one could get samples, dates for production, data sheets, etc.) If this turns into a real, avaliable product, it might help reprapping by giving us a way to lower friction (AKA permanently lubricate) our sliding bearings.

---

Larry Pfeffer,

My blog about building repstrap Cerberus:
[repstrap-cerberus.blogspot.com]

I think your missing the big picture here.

Look at the layers being so thin as a capability rather than a burden, which you are right about. One of the goals of reprap is to print itself. What if you could print P and N type semiconductor (wish wish) along with microfine layers a very good insulator such as glass, you could than print semiconductors embedded in the machines.

As to whether it actually exists, the website has some pretty cool videos [smallbusiness.uk.reuters.com] and was used on a subway in Germany I think.

Currently rep-rap is spewing out long strings of man made polymers, and this stuff is completely environmentally sound (so far as we know anyway, it's made from silica, the most abundant mineral on earth.)

I could be wrong. Also, I read, but can't find right now, that the cost was around $30-60, though I forgot the exact number and the volume wasn't given.

The only questions I have is, does it adhere to itself, and can it be printed from an inkjet style nozzle? Which we throw away by the truckload anyway.

If I recall correctly, transistors (what I think you meant with "semiconductors") are printed on silicon crystal wafers, a semiconductor material. Glass is made of silica (SiO2) not silicon, so you wouldn't be able to print transistors on it.

Using liquid glass is a cool idea, but printing something with nanoscale layers, like the Physorg article mentioned, would take forever, lol! It would be neat to make your own glass prescription lenses or dishes or what have you if they figured out a way to make the layers thicker.

I was just about to post this, which happens to answer your point about printing semiconductors:
[www.sciencedaily.com]

"A multidisciplinary research team at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found that an organic semiconductor may be a viable candidate for creating large-area electronics, such as solar cells and displays that can be sprayed onto a surface as easily as paint."

Transistors, diodes, LEDs, and memory devices are made from semiconductor material (material that is capable of being in a conductive or non-conductive state "at will" so to speak). It's the arrangement of the material that makes it into the specific component.

Yes it will take forever to print, maybe that can be improved upon in the future. To make a 1 cm square 1mm thick takes 100,000 layers. if you're printing one layer per second it will take 27 hours to print. If you're printing semiconductor material at the same time, it means you've just made your own computer chip in a day for -I'm guessing- a reasonable price (there are 10,000 square centimeters in one square meter and since they are coating entire walls with this stuff....) How long have those here spent making their reprap?

You could make your own prescription lenses and dinner plates, but I'm thinking more along the lines of printing your own iPhone like device and, expanding upon your own idea, lenses with built in electronics (and it doesn't take much imagination to see what you could do with that).

Lets face it, squirting out half millimeter gobs of plastic will never produce a self replicating machine let alone one capable of printing anything you actually want to own.

Now you just might be able to print nanoscale layers at the cost of an inkjet cartridge. Oh, and I forgot, as others might have, that there's an $80,000 prize for making a better reprap.

PS: you don't have to only print this stuff, this can be a hard outside layer with filler layers in the middle.

You're right. P and N are types of semiconductor, not types of transistor, aren't they? I thought you were talking about the glass itself being the transistor, not just a substrate, for a second there. I'm sure the nanoscale-layered printed glass would make a great substrate for organic semiconductors, if a tad time-consuming. Who knows? Maybe economical home printing of electronics will be widespread 20 years down the road.