Electric paint

[RayP]

Has anybody tried this stuff?

http://www.bareconductive.com/store

ray

[howardnair]

no- but it looks like  fun --and a usable tool

[RayP]

I have been pondering how to use it today and I have come up with two possibilities.

1 - as a substitute for simple printed circuit boards. For example a cascoded IXCP10M45S or DN2540 which I would usually use a strip board to accomplish but it always seems messy to me. http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/tubediy/messages/16/169145.html

2 - to play around with surface mount components. My hands are not steady enough for delicate solder work and this might be easier. It would get rid of the excess heat problem as well.

Other ideas for possible use would be welcome.

ray

[mcandmar]

I've not used that brand but have used other conductive inks in the past with good results.  One instance was a broken track on a video card where a friend used a screwdriver to push the locking tab and scored the back of the PCB, conductive ink allowed me to bridge the gap and put the card back into service for many years.  I would say it has its limitations, probably has higher resistance than a PCB track, and undoubtedly would have a current carrying limitation too so may not work for everything.  Having said that you can buy similar stuff for repairing the heater elements found on the rear window of cars.

Basically i wouldn't be making a circuit out of it, or using it replace solder, but could be handy to have for repair jobs.

[ssssly]

Used to use stuff similar to that to bridge traces on CPUs and motherboards. Particularly the older AMD chipsets. Could turn their midline processors into the top of the line processors with a couple new trace lines.

Worked well enough that it outlived the computers themselves.

Don't know if I would want to put hundreds of volts or tens of amps through it on a permanent basis. But as long as it was away from something expensive that could catch fire, I have been known to do crazier things to see what happens.