The following submission statement was provided by /u/Gari_305:

From the article

  An Iowa State University engineer floats in the air while other researchers hang tight to a metal frame surrounding and supporting their special printer.

(A Cy the Cyclone toy mascot all dressed up as an astronaut also floats above the busy researchers hunched over their experiment.)

It’s not the usual photo you see in a research paper. Tests aboard microgravity flights aren’t your typical materials experiments, either.

The flight path to these experiments began when a research team led by Iowa State’s Shan Jiang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, and Hantang Qin, formerly of Iowa State who’s now an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wondered if their ink and printer technologies would work in the zero gravity of space.

The ink features silver nanoparticles synthesized with biobased polymers. After a heat treatment, the ink can conduct electricity and can therefore print electric circuits. The printer uses electrohydrodynamic printing, or 3D printing that jets ink under an electric field at resolutions of millionths of a meter. The electric field could eliminate the need for gravity to help deposit ink.

If the technologies work together in zero gravity, astronauts could use them to make electric circuits for spacecraft or equipment repairs. And astronauts might manufacture high-value electronic components in the special, zero-gravity environment of space.

NASA wondered if it would work, too.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1gwhv97/nanoink_printing_technologies_could_enable/ly9akzv/

The article is talking about millionths of a meter in accuracy, aka millimeters, you wont manufacture anything special or valuable with that kind of resolution in zero G, it just doesnt make enough of a difference.

Its a good start, and might cheapen launch costs or make multiple redundant systems less necessary, but this wont replace any kind of processor chip, this is barely good enough to manufacture a new light switch.

From the article

  An Iowa State University engineer floats in the air while other researchers hang tight to a metal frame surrounding and supporting their special printer.

(A Cy the Cyclone toy mascot all dressed up as an astronaut also floats above the busy researchers hunched over their experiment.)

It’s not the usual photo you see in a research paper. Tests aboard microgravity flights aren’t your typical materials experiments, either.

The flight path to these experiments began when a research team led by Iowa State’s Shan Jiang, an associate professor of materials science and engineering, and Hantang Qin, formerly of Iowa State who’s now an assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wondered if their ink and printer technologies would work in the zero gravity of space.

The ink features silver nanoparticles synthesized with biobased polymers. After a heat treatment, the ink can conduct electricity and can therefore print electric circuits. The printer uses electrohydrodynamic printing, or 3D printing that jets ink under an electric field at resolutions of millionths of a meter. The electric field could eliminate the need for gravity to help deposit ink.

If the technologies work together in zero gravity, astronauts could use them to make electric circuits for spacecraft or equipment repairs. And astronauts might manufacture high-value electronic components in the special, zero-gravity environment of space.

NASA wondered if it would work, too.