What do you guys think of voltera or voxel8? Do you think that there is a big market for circuit board 3D printers? Would you buy one?
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From the demo of the Voltera, I think it looks pretty good. I’m skeptical of the quality of the printed boards, but the paste extruder and reflow heater sound pretty neat. I’m interested in knowing if it actually works for reflow, though. Can the board actually be heated from the bottom to a hot enough temperature to melt the solder? I would think that the old toaster oven method would be much more energy efficient.
I guess I’ll hold off judgement until I’ve had a chance to try it out.
Hi I definitely intend to check this out! I am hoping to see it before the Kick Starter goes live,
Glenn
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These look amazing, the $9k price tag is a little steep for me to buy personally, but if the quality is high enough one would be good for the office.
if you had one of these and a Tempo you would be set.
I think theses are a much needed step in for hardware startups.
Voltera is supposed to be 1.5k - The Voxel8 (which is less appealing to me) is 9K
1.5k is a way more reasonable price for me at home! and the background video on the Voltera site is great.
I saw the Voxel8 at CES and was impressed, I have pre-ordered one. I also talked with the Voxel8 and Autodesk team about possibly adding Upverter integration into Project Wire (http://spark.autodesk.com/wire). The project wire developers are in Toronto, make it happen!
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Managed to snag a second round early bird Voltera. I am hoping to see one in person before the kickstarter closes.
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Minimum pin pitch is 0.8mm. This eliminates any QNFs etc. Good for hobby work but you wouldn’t be able to use the vast majority of new, high-performance chips.
but wow…this is essentially an unlimited number of layers, no? For the same price, you could have a 16 layer board?
I have gone through your topic and found Voxel8 at CES looking pretty nice for my future projects.
I also want to know how i can add the Upverter Integration into my project.
Also i want to know more about the Voltera or Voxel8. I want to more about its MCU and the other electronic hardware component?
Also how it would be helpful in my electronic circuits projects?
if you shoot support@upverter.com and let me know what you are thinking for integration I can see what we can do.
Voxel8 looks AMAZING. first commercial attempt I’ve seen at a printed complex object (well, as long as you stop and put the components in manually…) I wish I had a spare 9k, because this is the future of electronic design for small personal objects.
The special custom software from Autodesk worries me. They are relying on a 3rd party to develop the core of their actual functionality. time will tell if it’s any good, but if no good, the whole thing is kinda dead in the water. (Unless upverter steps in!)
As for Voltera, as a paste machine it actually looks useful, and reflow could be good, assuming the reflow feature works as advertised… I’m a little skeptical about the power of reflow by only heating from the underside.
But I’m a a bit more skeptical about the PCB printer side of it.
- the actual boards it makes seem extremely limited what you can do compared to conventional 2 layer PCB. To the point where for a moderately complex design you could get the boards made quick turn in the time you spend designing it to work for this process… and then there’s the actual design tradeoffs you’d have to make.
- conductivity of traces, for the kinds of analogue circuits that I might actually want to quick prototype. extra ohms added around the place can be problematic, and not representational of the thing you’re trying to prototype.