Soft Inkjet Circuits
01Digital Fabrication Technologies, Arshad, Featured Project, Steimle
Best Paper Award
(UIST 2019)
Despite the increasing popularity of soft interactive devices, their fabrication remains complex and time consuming. We contribute a process for rapid do-it-yourself fabrication of soft circuits using a conventional desktop inkjet printer. It supports inkjet printing of circuits that are stretchable,ultra-thin,high resolution, and integrated with a wide variety of materials used for prototyping.We introduce multi-ink functional printing on a desktop printer for realizing multi-material devices, including conductive and isolating inks. We further present DIY techniques to enhance compatibility be-tween inks and substrates and the circuits’ elasticity. This enables circuits on a wide set of materials including temporary tattoo paper, textiles, and thermoplastic. Four application cases demonstrate versatile uses for realizing stretchable devices, e-textiles, body-based and re-shapeable interfaces.
The publication received a Best Paper Award at ACM UIST’19.