Is something like this the future of pcb design and production?

[scatterandfocus]

I caught these videos on youtube today.  The first is pcb traces being laser printed and then coated with silver ink. 

The second is pcb's and components being printed directly using an inkjet printer. 

With graphene coming of age and so much going on today with 3d printing and small cnc's, it seems that in the future it will become the norm to directly print pcb's and even some components integrated into the printed pcb.  Thinking about it further, this would open up a world of possibilities, such as realtime online collaboration of circuit design, much more direct sharing of circuits, and really fast circuit revisions.

Maybe it will end up being the case that new pcb versions are just inserted into zif like connectors and off you go.  And maybe many-layered pcb's will become a thing.  And graphene printed semiconductors as part of the pcb.  It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see such things as doped inks, sub-circuit localized batteries, flexible pcb sections located in all 3 dimensions to fit around and within mechanical parts and case shapes, and on and on.

[daqq]

With graphene coming of age and so much going on today with 3d printing and small cnc's, it seems that in the future it will become the norm to directly print pcb's and even some components integrated into the printed pcb.

Components are already being integrated into PCBs. It's a fairly high priced technology though.

IMHO: As to such manufacturing being the future, I don't think so. It's cool I guess, good for rapid prototyping of simple circuitry, but for precision you will need optical methods. In particular the resistance of the traces seems really large in the second video.

There are certainly niche areas where that kind of things are useful - direct inkjet PCBs are actually being used for RFID tags, keyboard guts, similar things that do not require extreme precision. This was done using a printer:

I can't remember the company though

Thinking about it further, this would open up a world of possibilities, such as realtime online collaboration of circuit design, much more direct sharing of circuits, and really fast circuit revisions.

The question is if anyone would actually want online collaboration on a PCB design outside of your particular team.

And graphene printed semiconductors as part of the pcb.

You are mixing technologies - with PCBs you need a fairly low resolution, for useful semiconductor stuff you need um/nm resolutions.

[daqq]

flexible pcb sections located in all 3 dimensions to fit around and within mechanical parts and case shapes, and on and on.

This is also being done Search for "molded interconnect device".
http://www.harting-mitronics.ch/fileadmin/hartingmitronics/downloads/3D-MID_for_Automotive.pdf
https://www.molex.com/molex/capabilities/capabilities.jsp?key=mid__lds_technology

[VK3DRB]

Many of us do high density, multilayered PCBs. For prototyping, many people use LTspice, to save time having to lash up small boards. The printing technique for, say, 8 layer boards with blind vias is a long way off. Maybe in 20 years, 3D printing will have evolved to do print such circuits. But by then I'll most likely be dead, so I won't care.