Another category where PCB printing can help is rapid prototyping of electronic components. The highly specialized 3D printers that print out traces for electronics are at the peak of interest. The possibility that professional quality PCBs can be created through additive manufacturing allows manufacturers the liberty to print their own prototypes of circuit boards in house i.e. for rapid prototyping, custom manufacturing, research and development. It is, however, rather unlikely that these processes will replace the traditional methods of developing high performance applications and electronic devices in house. Rather, they would be of great use for the purpose of prototyping; which reduces build time from entire weeks to a mere few hours. Some of the benefits that manufacturers can expect from this technology include reducing the time to market for products, speeding up of iterations and facilitating innovation for PCBs. 3D printers specialized in PCB can even help test and build PCBs in sections of their choice.
However, some manufacturers believe that the technology would not require them to send their intellectual property for off-site manufacturing, which has been traditionally done by subcontractors which puts the IPs of the manufacturers at risk. Then there remains the potential
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