Flowcuits: Crafting Tangible and Interactive Electrical Components with Liquid Metal Circuits

Tokuda, Yutaka; Sahoo, Deepak Ranjan; Jones, Matt; Subramanian, Sriram; Withana, Anusha

doi:10.1145/3430524.3440654

Cited by 13 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 54 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…However, this process has several disadvantages: removing unnecessary material after cutting is cumbersome and time-consuming, and thin traces can be damaged when removing the surrounding material [26]. In addition to the above, gold foil [25,29], a water-transferring technique [7], 3D printing of conductive filaments [10,28,30,35], conductive material plated nylon fabric [13], carbon-coated paper [42], and liquid metal [32] have been used for circuit fabrication.…”

Section: Fabrication Of Customized Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

CircWood: Laser Printed Circuit Boards and Sensors for Affordable DIY Woodworking

Ishii

Kato

Ikematsu³

et al. 2022

Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

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Due to its natural warmth, wood is frequently used to produce touchable objects such as furniture and signboards. Laser cutting machines are becoming common in personal wood processing to cut and engrave wood. In this paper, we propose a method and workflow for producing various sensors and electrical circuits for interactive devices by partially carbonizing the wood surface with a laser cutting machine. Similar to wiring on a conventional printed circuit board (PCB), the carbonized part functions as a conductive electrical path. A method for creating electronic circuits and sensors made of carbon graphene on botanical materials has been proposed. This technique makes use of a raster-scanning femtosecond (fs) laser, which is less common for personal fabrication than a constant-wave (CW) laser. Moreover, raster-scanning requires a substantial amount of time to create a circuit that is mainly made of conductive lines. This paper extends the method with a defocused vector-scanning CW laser beam and reduces the time and cost required for fabrication. The proposed method uses an affordable CW laser cutter to fabricate an electrical circuit, including touch sensors, damage sensors, and load sensors on wood boards. The circuit can be easily connected to traditional PCBs and electric parts such as one-board microcomputers using metal screws and nails typically used in DIY woodworking. We develop ease of use software design tool that supports the creation and fabrication of carbon paths. In addition, we report on a series of investigations, including optimizing wood materials and laser parameters to establish design guidelines. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI); User interface toolkits.

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Section: Fabrication Of Customized Electronicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

CircWood: Laser Printed Circuit Boards and Sensors for Affordable DIY Woodworking

Ishii

Kato

Ikematsu³

et al. 2022

Sixteenth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…For example, Swaminathan et al demonstrated a technique to fabricate conductive traces while keeping the object mechanically strong for heavy use [66]. In addition to solid conductive traces, recent work has adopted conductive liquids for fabricating circuits using a 3D printed stamp as the circuit mold [69]. Beyond rigid objects, existing works also show the feasibility of embedding conductive traces or electronics for 3D printed flexible objects, such as conductive fabrics [43], electrospun textiles [46], using foldable structures [42,78], or the flexible TPU (Thermoplastic Polyurethane) material with silver inks (i.e., AgTPU) [70].…”

Section: Embedding Objects With 3d Printsmentioning

confidence: 99%

InfoPrint: Embedding Information into 3D Printed Objects

Jiang¹,

Wang²,

Sarsenbayeva³

et al. 2021

Preprint

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We present a technique to embed information invisible to the eye inside 3D printed objects. The information is integrated in the object model, and then fabricated using off-the-shelf dual-head FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) 3D printers. Our process does not require human intervention during or after printing with the integrated model. The information can be arbitrary symbols, such as icons, text, binary, or handwriting. To retrieve the information, we evaluate two different infrared-based imaging devices that are readily available -thermal cameras and near-infrared scanners. Based on our results, we propose design guidelines for a range of use cases to embed and extract hidden information. We demonstrate how our method can be used for different applications, such as interactive thermal displays, hidden board game tokens, tagging functional printed objects, and autographing non-fungible fabrication work.

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“…For example, Stretchable and Soft Electronics [1] uses liquid metal to create shape-confgurable circuits through guiding electrically actuated gallium-based liquids on pre-fabricated paths. Similarly, Flowcuits [10] uses blue-tac as a re-usable material to engrave guiding circuit paths for liquid metals to fow on. These direct means, however, require physical intervention, which is sub-optimal for remote learning experiences and collaborations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%