conducting inks

Don't knwo about really drawing the circuti board, but there are conductive paints available... Those paints usually contain copper or silver so they are conductive. Those are used for shielding purposes (coppe paint to form EMC shield to plastic case etc.) or electronics repair (repairing car window heating systems, circuit board traces etc.).

I don't know of any paint that would be feasible to form circuit boards that could be soldered normally. Usually this kind of paints make conductiv traces pn board, but soldeing to them is very hard or almost inpossible.

Silver paint is available in tiny bottles. It is quite expensive.

I have used copper paint in spray bottle format.

I don't know if those could be used for this. The paints I know contain quite a bit of metal in them (solver or copper) and I quess that a typical inkjet printer might not like this. The typical solvents used on inkjet printer inks seems to be pretty much like water, when in the metal paints it is something entirely different, which could also be a problem.

I think that Xerox has been developing an ink like this, for doing exactly what you have in mind.....

Regards, Brad PC Logic

Schematic entry and PCB design software

I had a couple breaks in the back heater grill of a car and bought one of the repair kits from Frostfighter.com. I got the "Grid Repair Kit", was $24 including shipping. IT came with a tiny bottle of repair paint, a little roll of masking tape and a few single-ended cotton swabs. The conductive paint has the texture and smell of fingernail polish, and it appears that there is copper dust/metalflake in it. I cannot remember what the main conductive ingredient was, but I do remember that it was not copper. I applied it to the window in the fall, because it says that the temperature has to be warm enough for the stuff to cure properly, above 60F or smoething. Which it was, but it never worked that I could see, when I turned on the back defroster during the winter, the repaired lines were still not working. And the next spring when I touched the stuff, it cracked off the glass and stuck to my hand. ....I asked around online and was told that you can go to a health food store and buy colloidal silver fairly cheap, and then mix that with model enamel gloss very thick, and it will conduct fairly well--but I have not tried that yet. ~~~

Humm. I wonder if it's possible to solder to this stuff.

It wasn't 1st April was it?

Try lightly sanding just the copper then try again :) I repaired quite a few solar panels this way.

-A

having

special

SNIP I used nickel based shielding spray paint to repair the broken traces in a keyboard: spray a small quantity into a small bottle and use a small brush or swab to paint over the damaged bits. Much cheaper than silver paints or pens (150 ml for £10)

Wim