It's very quick! A simple board like the Hello World will take about 5 minutes to print, 30 minutes to bake (the ink needs to be dried), and depending on how fast you place your components about 30 minutes to dispense solder paste and reflow.
You can comfortably make a simple single layer board in two to three hours.
Yes! The V-One comes with a drill attachment.
The V-One Drill makes double sided boards easy to create and comes with all the drill bits, rivets and other accessories you need to get started. Learn more about it here!
128mm x 116mm (5.0" x 4.5"). Visit our specs page for full product details.
While multi-layer additive electronics is a dream for Voltera, and we're working hard to enable this functionality, currently we only support 2 layer boards.
The V-One currently does not have an integrated pick-and-place, so components must be placed by hand. The V-One has been designed to be a prototyping tool. At these volumes setting up a pick and place machine can take more time and effort than manual placement.
The V-One only drills the substrate - meaning, you can create a hole through your substrate which is the same size as the drill bit you select. The V-One does not support routing or milling.
The maximum board thickness for the V-One clamps is 3mm. Check our our full tool spec to learn more.
Yes, but only single-sided boards with a maximum height below 7mm, to accomodate the z-axis clearance of the V-One.
A single solder paste cartridge will allow you to dispense up to 11,000 0603 solder pads.
The solder paste cartridge has an official shelf life of 8 months and should be stored in the refrigerator when not used.
The heated bed can reach a maximum temperature of 240°C (464°F) in about 2 minutes. If you use your own solder paste you can manually control the temperature to follow your own reflow profile.
If you want to use the V-One mainly for solder paste dispensing of fabbed boards, we offer a special solder alloy for boards with a lead based HASL finish.
We can dispense solder paste down to 0402 components and although we officially support a 0.5 mm pin to pin pitch, some of our users have dispensed on 0.4 mm pitch IC's without difficulty. We have also dispensed on BGA components reliably.
Once you tell the software where the board is mounted, the V-One will take about 5-10 minutes to dispense paste.
Components need to be placed by hand, but once they are placed, reflowing the board only takes about 2 or 3 minutes.
Nope! Elemental analysis of our solder paste alloy shows a 0.01% trace amount of lead. This is well below the maximum of 0.07% required by IPC J-STD-006-B for lead-free solder.
The conductive ink and solder wire are also lead free. Download the MSDS to learn more.
The main difference between T4 and T5 solder paste is the particle size of the tiny balls of solder suspended in the flux. For T4 paste, most of the solder particles will range from about 20-38 μm. For T5 paste, the range is about 10-25 μm. If you want to learn more, watch this video we made about solder paste.
Simply put, because solder paste is much more forgiving than conductive ink. Solder paste tends to be drawn to the components during the reflow process so we can reliably dispense on smaller pads.
A single ink cartridge will allow you to print up to 85 Hello World boards. This also equates to 100 m of conductive trace at 8 mil width, or 200 cm2 of solid pour. The number of boards you are able to print will depend on size and complexity of the circuits you are building.
The ink cartridge has an official shelf life of 12 months and should be stored in the refrigerator when not used.
We've tested our printed PCBs under 100mA load for 4 months in ambient, high-temperature (60°C) and low-temperature (5°C) environments, with no detectable change in performance.
We recommend you stick with through-hole for large components like connectors, but use surface mount components for resistors and capacitors.
For passive components, we can dispense ink down to 0402 pads. For IC's, although we officially support 0.8 mm pin to pin pitch, 0.65mm has been shown to work reliably.
An 8 month research partnership with the University of Alberta demonstrated the ink will perform on par with standard copper up to 5 GHz!
To learn about conductivity considerations, visit this article in our support docs.
The bulk resistivity of our ink is 9.5E-7 Ohms.m and the sheet resistance under typical conditions is 12 mOhms/sq. It is among the best conductive inks on the market. While it is not as conductive as copper, it is capable of handling almost all digital and analog applications.
Your mileage may vary, and you're definitely in adventure mode. Much of custom ink printing is trial and error, and dependent on the material properties of your custom formulation, so accuracy and reliability are impossible to promise. In very general terms, materials that you can screen print are the best place to start, but we can't guarantee that something will or won't work. Many of our power users do dispense custom inks, so if you have questions about specific materials reach out to Voltera using the in-app support chat and we'll help you through it.
We use copper rivets for a couple of reasons. First: structural stability. Having a solid copper sleeve through your board is going to be much sturdier than cured ink. Second: hand soldering. Working with copper rivets allows for a nice solid metal surface to solder to, making hand soldering much easier.
Yep! The software is required to operate the V-One. You can download a copy of it here.
Think of apps on your phone. Your software will automatically update with new features, bug fixes, and user experience upgrades. Many of the updates come directly from our users suggestions. Check out our release notes to learn more.
The Voltera software allows you to use whatever CAD tool you are already comfortable with! You can use EAGLE, Altium, KiCad, Mentor Graphics, Cadence, DipTrace and more! Just export your designs as Gerbers and upload to our software. Easy as that!
We hate it when a perfectly good piece of equipment sits on a shelf collecting dust because no one knows how to operate it. That won't happen with the V-One.
At Voltera, we're obsessed with user experience and take it very seriously. We've gone to great lengths and invested a lot of time in making sure your first print experience is a pleasant one. Whether you're a student, teacher, parent, engineer, or rocket scientist, we made the software friendly and easy for everyone to use.
Yes, you can use the Voltera V-One software in six different languages: English, French, Korean, Arabic, Spanish and Russian.
Absolutely. Just keep in mind that this will throttle your access to the in-app support chat and automatic updates for your printer.
For consumable shipping, we charge a flat fee of $20 USD worldwide.
It costs $25 USD per printer to ship within Canada.
It costs $100 USD per printer to ship to the USA.
It costs $250 USD per printer to ship international (not all countries supported).
For 3 or more printers, please contact sales@voltera.io
If you want to pay with credit card, you can do so directly on our store.
If you want to pay with a bank transfer, please send your PO to sales@voltera.io and we'll provide you our banking details.
We have worked closely with our fantastic shipping partners to get the best rates for your orders.
If you want to ship with your account or if you have special shipping requirements, please contact sales@voltera.io before you place your order.
The V-One ships as two boxes: A large one (19 × 13 × 11 in, 9.1 Kg) and a small one. (5 × 4 × 2 in, 100 g)
No. Since these rates are unique to each country, all applicable duties and taxes are payable upon receipt of the product.
Normally when the shipment reaches your country, our courier will contact you to arrange the payment of duties and taxes to clear customs.
We offer a two year warranty from date of delivery. More information can be found in our Terms of Service.
Yes! Since consumables can be used up quickly when many students are using the V-One, we offer a discount on our common consumable materials. Reach out to sales@voltera.io to find out more.
We are always exploring new inks and partnerships. Please contact support@voltera.io with your contact information. Thank you!
Yes. Contact sales@voltera.io.
We want to! If you have ideas or are able to help make this dream a reality, please contact hello@voltera.io. Thank you!
We love resellers! Head over to our reseller page and fill out the form to get started. We'll be in touch!