# What design limitations does a higher-than-average resistance trace impose?

There's a Kickstarter running right now for a machine that prints circuit boards. Rather than a traditional etching process, they use conductive (silver-based) ink to print traces and pads. It has a resistance of 12 m$\Omega$/in^2. What design limitations does this impose? More specifically, what kinds of circuits would I not be able to produce with these parameters?

I assume high frequency things like high speed busses (LVDS?) and printed antennas? Other things?

Note: I am specifically not placing a link to the project here as this question isn't meant as an advertisement for it.

• +1 for thinking to look at this parameter I was thinking of buying one this morning just to play with :) Feb 10 '15 at 22:42
• Should your title say resistance (or maybe resistivity) instead of reactance? If you really mean reactance, could you edit the question to be more clear about how the machine makes traces with higher reactance? Feb 11 '15 at 5:28
• @ThePhoton you're right. I meant to encompass both resistance and inductance, but worded wrong. Feb 11 '15 at 5:51
• The inductance shouldn't be any worse than for an etched PCB. It comes from trace geometry and the separation from the return path. Feb 11 '15 at 5:53
• Just get a voxel8 one, they support 3d printing of traces ;) Feb 11 '15 at 12:25

1/2 oz copper (about the lightest typically used) has a resistance of approximately 1m$\Omega$/$\square$, so it's more than an order of magnitude worse, and about 50x worse than the 2-oz copper typically used for power circuits.