• 한국기계가공학회지
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• 제15권2호
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• pp.1-8
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• 2016

Generally, electrical circuits are fabricated as Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs) and mounted on the casing of the product. Additionally, this requires many other parts and some labor for assembly. Recently, molding technology has increasingly been applied to embed simple circuits in plastic casing. The technology is called a Molded Interconnected Device (MID). By using this technology, PCB fabrication can be replaced by molding, and much of the corresponding assembly process for PCBs can be eliminated if the circuit is simple enough for molding. Furthermore, as the improvement of conductive materials and printing technologies of simple electric circuits can be printed directly on the casing part, this also reduces the complexity of the product design and production cost. Therefore, this paper introduces a new MID fabrication process using direct 3D printing technology. Additionally, it is applied to an automotive part of a cruise control switch. The methodology and design are shown.