Electrically Conductive Resin

[Jesse6669]

This looks promising..

One of my headaches in prototyping my 1:450 mechanism is the pickup and power routing.. very small wires and etched bits, that take a large % of space.  Printing structural truck and chassis components of conductive material (without having to cast or machine them in metal) would be a real boon. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214860421007375

[C855B]

I've been toying with this idea by adding powdered carbon to clear resin. Nothing to report as yet other than a mess in the preparation.

[Lemosteam]

I've been toying with this idea by adding powdered carbon to clear resin. Nothing to report as yet other than a mess in the preparation.

Don't do it.  I tried this with tungsten powder and failed miserably.

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=51896.msg725464#msg725464

[peteski]

In my view, any resin mix using powdered conductive media (metal, carbon/graphite), even if you can manage to make it conductive, will have relatively high resistance (compared to solid metal).

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Can you do what you need with conductive paint?

[Jesse6669]

I have some--well, one of those conductive ink pens--so far not real successful.  It needs a rather thick line of paint/ink to work--by that time magnet wire is still better (which is fine, low voltage motors).  It may be more likely that 3D print-investment casting is the way to go tbh.  Or a sintering printer ...   

[IronPenguin]

Oh, man. I just saw a Facebook ad for a 3d printer expressly intended for electrical design of some sort. Not my interest, so I didn't look at it, but apparently there are such animals. I wish I could offer more detail, but it's gone from my feed.