Electric Circuit Elements

pinshape

When I discovered that manufacturing plastic and metal components together is now feasible and affordable soon, I recognized the vast potential of the 3D circuit board. Made in any shape, metal and plastic inductors, resistors, and capacitors can be sized properly for RF circuits, while any chip becomes a viable option along with LEDs and potentially even polymer semiconductors in the near future. This iteration features metal shapes for resistor, inductor, and capacitor components. Soon, I will create the remaining parts, including wires, nodes, chips, etc., allowing us to fabricate 3D circuits. Envisioning a remote control airplane with its electronics integrated into the fuselage or a processor cube, stepper motor for some REPRAP of the near future, is now within our reach. All those impressive sci-fi depictions of circuitry etched into tools, weapons, instruments, or ships are now accessible to us. The possibilities are endless! Instructions: To test the feasibility of inductively powered LEDs, I designed an RLC resonant tank circuit and an LED. To achieve this, we need a combined circuit element in distributed parallel form. That means creating a pair of interwound inductor coils that form capacitance between plates and inductance along their length, resulting in inherent resistance due to the metal's conductivity, hence an RLC circuit. By attaching an LED to either end, we can light it with an external magnetic field at or near the resonant frequency. The example circuit, RLC LED resonator, showcases the geometry.