Science & technology | Printed electronics

On a roll

Printing with conventional rotary presses will create cheaper electronics

|Accrington

MAKING things with 3D printers is an idea that is being adopted by manufacturers to produce goods ranging from false teeth to jet engines. Conventional printing, though, has not remained idle. Machines that have their origins in the high-speed rotary presses that apply words and images to large reels of paper, like the ones which turn out the physical versions of this newspaper, have started making other things as well.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “On a roll”

The new political divide

From the July 30th 2016 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Dr Dorothy Bishop.

Elon Musk is causing problems for the Royal Society

His continued membership has led to a high-profile resignation

Legal Amazon preservation area borders the field for soybean planting.

Deforestation is costing Brazilian farmers millions

Without trees to circulate moisture, the land is getting hotter and drier


Robot mixing at Toyota Research Institute.

Robots can learn new actions faster thanks to AI techniques

They could soon show their moves in settings from car factories to care homes


Scientists are learning why ultra-processed foods are bad for you

A mystery is finally being solved

Scientific publishers are producing more papers than ever

Concerns about some of their business models are building

The two types of human laugh

One is caused by tickling; the other by everything else