Clay PCB Tutorial
feministhackerspaces.cargo.site227 points by j0r0b0 19 hours ago
227 points by j0r0b0 19 hours ago
Got to take part in this when they ran it at Creative Coding Utrecht. They had brought a variety of clays for us to use, most wild dug from forests in Austria. But they also had some clay from deep beneath Vienna that they got from (iirc) some new metro digging. It was a lot of fun and the end artefact is very pleasing.
> But they also had some clay from deep beneath Vienna that they got from (iirc) some new metro digging
U5 Matzleinsdorferplatz, in der nahe Gudrunstrasse? I've been down in those tunnels for a visit, they're extremely cool. Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take any photos.
It's weird seeing what's going to be the bit where the platform is, when they fill the big hole in with concrete, and the sloping-up tunnel that'll be the stairs and escalator, but it's all just flat grey shotcrete. It's like looking at a clay render of it before the textures and bump maps go on ;-)
As an electonics labs person I applaude all efforts to mske our practise more renewable. However this is a circuit that I would have wired without PCB at all, directly point to point, wire to pin.
Better than a greenwashed alternative is to avoid using msterial that is not necessary. Yet one also had to consider the whole lifetime of a product: ten throwaway circuits versus one very durable one etc.
They’re investigating “can circuits be produced from”, not asserting “this is a better medium for this exact circuit”. It is a tutorial on creating clay PCBs at all, a demo of the technique.
Yes. And thus using a circuit that has the complexity of a circuit one would put onto a circuit board would be a good demonstration. E.g. showcasing vias and other circuit board technologies.
Understandably the first step is to start simple, but that is the essence of my criticism: Too many of these projects become viral hits that stop making any progress after the first symbolic success. Cynics would say these projects all too often stop exactly at the point where the actual challenges start.
And as someone who cares about the environment, I am not sure how I feel about a hundred symbolic projects that go nowhere. Are the substrates of PCBs really the problem? What if people have to throw entire devices with mud PCBs into the bin after a year because the mud PCB couldn't handle the vibration and humidity? Is that environmentally sound?
I'd love to someone really explore alternative PCB materials. But that means living in reality and compsring the whole lifecycle of the result to existing technologies. A automotive tire made of mud is also environmentally sound. It is just that it falls apart after half a block.
> Too many of these projects become viral hits that stop making any progress after the first symbolic success. Cynics would say these projects all too often stop exactly at the point where the actual challenges start.
What can you do to ensure the "real work" can actually be done, more precise paid for? Well, you could demo early in hope to attract coins. Maybe that is happening here.
Interesting experiment, but on the other hand, maybe 3D printing would have less emissions than an open fire?
I’ve not tried this, but it sounds like a good way to get fast turnaround for very simple circuits:
https://bsky.app/profile/castpixel.bsky.social/post/3mf52azn...
They're not great for anything that might produce heat. Seeing a MOSFET slowly starting to imitate the Tower of Pisa after dissipating a measly 1 W for a few moments was a sight to behold.
For about two seconds before I cut the power.
If heat dissipation matters and we're determined to 3D print at home then extruding a clay is probably the way to go. Laser sintering also seems relevant. For anyone concerned about an open fire a small electric oven isn't particularly expensive.
If you really wanted to go the route of printing plastic I guess you could fix the heat dissipation issue by using the plastic print to do lost PLA casting of an iron die with which you could cut a much thicker sheet of copper. But if you're going to melt iron you might as well give in and fire clay.
I once encountered a very old ceramic board related to telecoms. I'm not sure about the why but it consisted of a ceramic tablet with some sort of conductive resin printed onto it. A crude sort of layering was accomplished by printing a small spot of insulator on top of the junction where two traces crossed one another. I'd guess the board I saw dated to the mid 80s or earlier.
Do you not think it might be counterproductive considering every new activity in terms of emissions output? We need to reduce emissions, to do this we need systemic change. It seems unfair to place the burdon of reaching efficiency gains that can only come from economoes of scale onto anything that that has not reached scale.
Systemic change cam be seeded from small ideas. Allow the ideas to be inefficient no matter what they are, their sum will still be tiny compared to the mass industry of established ideas. If you want change ideas are a good place to start. If the ideas are good don't reject them because of their resource use in their embryonic stage, once they are established as good ideas we can turn our mind on how to make them efficient good ideas.
CO2 emissions from burning wood (and charcoal) can considered net-zero by some (I'm not really interested in arguing one way or the other) because all of the CO2 being released was initially trapped out of the air by the plant, not releasing "new" carbon that was initially trapped underground
There’s more to pollution than CO2. You’re polluting the neighborhood with smoke, which is bad for lungs. Maybe okay in a rural area if neighbors are far away.
I guess we can just keep ordering pre-stuffed PCBs from JLCPCB. This way, the pollution involved in the various processes still exists, but it's hidden from view behind a box of minty-new circuit boards delivered to the doorstep.
Or, you know: If the neighbors take up a serious hobby-scale effort of wood-fired pottery project with local clay that they mined themselves, then... Perhaps we could be supportive of their effort, eh? Isn't that part of what being neighborly involves?
There's nothing environmentally friendly about burning woods good old prehistoric ways. It releases tons of particulates and nitrogen oxides and some other toxic hydrocarbons. That's why it's illegal now in many regions to burn trashes in the backyard.
I'm sure the clay could be fired in an electric kiln powered by renewable/non-emitting power.
Wood fired are CO2 neutral (but a problem of pollution with fine particulate at scale in poorly ventilated valleys).
It's an art project
I want so badly for you to expand on this thought. What are you implying about it by describing it as an art project? What does art mean to you? Are you expanding on or disputing whether it is an experiment? Please, go on.
Meant to be a fun thing to do/experience/learn and not produced on an industrial scale. One small fire pit to harden some clay isn't going to make a material impact on total human CO2 emissions.
That's a cool project, I've actually considered something somewhere but never put the energy into actually doing the work.
I'm guessing that the issue here might have been that copper as a metal is kind of difficult to trace the source to ethically?
Also, with this method each 3D print is a new instance of using plastic, where with clay you only use plastic once
For me the next step should explore how to cut out the firing part of the process altogether, pottery looks cool but the process requires a lot of energy. Perhaps it could be done on a piece of wood planed by hand? You can get those fairly flat. Then use copper tape (or laminate your own copper really) with some homemade adhesive?
Actually now that I think about it you could just make pine rosin (pine resin + alcohol) as your adhesive. For the copper laminate this might be harder without steel rollers or a way to cut.
Dredged from memory is the "phenolic" circuit board, popular before about 1990.
https://picamfg.com/pcb-base-materials/ "FR-2: Phenolic Resin with Paper Reinforcement" / https://epra.eu/en/sustainability/bio-sourced-and-bio-based-... - you could make an entirely natural-derived paper+resin circuit board, with high dimensional stability, and validated by real use.
The only downside is it's not inherently fire resistant.
Amusing historical note, that's where the word "breadboard" came from. Wooden cutting boards were readily available, and people would make circuits by screwing down tube sockets and other components.
For what it’s worth, these can be fired in a campfire! No kiln or anything necessary.
Ceramics are already used a lot in electronics. Ceramic capacitors are the most well known. But you can find it in resistors, inductors and even PCBs. See for example:
https://www.bstceramicpcb.com/ceramic-pcb/thick-film-ceramic...
The article acknowledges this, and says they chose clay over ceramics for electricity consumption. Although I am not sure why they then chose an open wood fire, which is likely far more polluting than even non-renewable grid power
>Although I am not sure why they then chose an open wood fire, which is likely far more polluting than even non-renewable grid power
Likely not if you factor in the energy expenditure of gathering some firewood vs. energy expenditure of putting up a power grid.
inb4 "but it's already there" lmao
Well, the atmega fab was already there and that isn’t quite clean either :)
But there are many clean ways to generate electricity and electric kilns are quite efficient compared to heating over an open flame.
I like the artistic element of this exercise, just thought that line of reasoning was a bit off.
The chips were pulled from dead arduinos, not bought fresh off the production line
I know. We live in a society where both the power grid and atmegas already exist, and our individual actions are marginal in impact.
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I’m just providing my perspective on an article written from a different perspective that I found interesting. I’m not looking for a fight.