[Allan Adler]

I've heard of special pens that containing conducting inks. They were
mentioned to me as a way of drawing printed circuit boards and not having
to worry about etching copper. What I'm wondering is whether the inks
that go into these pens are available in containers other than the special
pens, so that for example they might be put into a printer cartridge.

Ignorantly,
Allan Adler
[email protected]

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* Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT Artificial *
* Intelligence Lab. My actions and comments do not reflect *
* in any way on MIT. Moreover, I am nowhere near the Boston *
* metropolitan area. *
* *
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[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

I've heard of special pens that containing conducting inks. They were
mentioned to me as a way of drawing printed circuit boards and not having
to worry about etching copper.

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.

What I'm wondering is whether the inks
that go into these pens are available in containers other than the special
pens,

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

I have used copper paint in spray bottle format.

so that for example they might be put into a printer cartridge.

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.

 

[CWatters]

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

It wasn't 1st April was it?

 

[Andre]

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. ~~~

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

-A

 

[Wim Ton]

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