Specialized machines designed for prototyping printed circuit boards can drastically speed up development efforts. Leland Teschler • Executive Editor Examine advice columns online pitched at engineers and you’ll often see posts advocating an investment in a milling machine specifically designed to produce prototype circuit boards. Engineers who use these machines point to benefits that include…
Additive manufacturing comes to the circuit board
Three-D-printing isn’t just for mechanical parts. There are machines on the market able to produce sophisticated printed circuit boards having multiple layers, complete with passive components fabbed with the same conductive inks and dielectrics used to make circuit traces. Most additive machines aimed at PCB work use ink jetting to lay down PCB traces and…