Perhaps the holiest of holy grails for the additive manufacturing (AM) industry is the fabrication of complete, functional goods within a single print operation.

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Rather than produce individual parts that must be assembled to form a final product, researchers and a handful of companies are pursuing this lofty goal, often focusing on electronics printing specifically as the biggest task to accomplish on the route to achieving that goal.

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Here we look at electronics 3D printing, how it began, the companies and researcher labs involved, its current state and where it is headed. Printed electronics are already a mainstay of our technological world, with processes such as screen printing, flexography, gravure, offset lithography and inkjet used to produce a wide array of electronic components that are nearly ubiquitous. German inventor Albert Hanson is often attributed as conceiving of the idea, patenting “Printed Wires” in 1903 and proposing the idea of […]

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