6 ms·
Clay PCB Tutorial
- amelius 5mo agoCeramics 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-pcb/thick-film-gold-plated-ceramic-igbt-circuit-board.html https://www.bstceramicpcb.com/ceramic-pcb/thick-film-ceramic...
- kube-system 5mo agoThe 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
- balamatom 5mo ago>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
- kube-system 5mo agoWell, 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.
- kennywinker 5mo agoThe chips were pulled from dead arduinos, not bought fresh off the production line
- kube-system 5mo agoI know. We live in a society where both the power grid and atmegas already exist, and our individual actions are marginal in impact.
- balamatom 5mo ago[flagged]
- kube-system 5mo agoI’m just providing my perspective on an article written from a different perspective that I found interesting. I’m not looking for a fight.
- balamatom 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoCould you please stop breaking the site guidelines, such as by posting unsubstantive and/or flamewar comments and/or crossing (as here) into personal attack? Your account has unfortunately been doing these things repeatedly. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- balamatom 5mo agoThere is no personal attack here; other than, perhaps, one conducted by whoever keeps flagging my perfectly substantial comments. But since you said "please", sure, I'll think about it.
- poulpy123 5mo agoYou need a grid infrastructure to build and ship the rest of the electronics as well as to use the board. It's a fun dit/artistic project but the political discourse used to describe it is absurd
- balamatom 5mo agoMost political discourse you consider normal today (e.g. "fun") was considered absurd some years ago. Fewer than you imagine.
- rcxdude 5mo agoThe reason the power grid exists is because enough people want to do enough of this kind of activity that if we were still burning wood to do it there would be no trees left. Scale does matter, and this kind of 'sustainability' can't sustain a fraction of the people on the planet.
- josh-wrale 5mo agoI'm thinking of finer grained applications. Would CNC before firing work? Perhaps finer grained printed stamp plus air-drying clay?
- kennywinker 5mo agoi don’t think air dry clay would work very well - it has none of the thermal properties that real clay has, and would probably burn up on soldering?
- WarmWash 5mo agoTruly stonepunk
- Teknomadix 5mo agoStoned punks for sure.
- fallat 5mo agoI feel like foregoing the whole PCB would be better, and just wirewrap, or "free-air" solder.
- amelius 5mo agoHow would you handle LQFP or BGA packages?
- Brian_K_White 5mo ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 5mo agoHow well did Albert Hanson’s flat foil board handle BGAs? Instead of looking for flaws, try looking for the insight. I’m reminded of this blog post that was on hn recently https://scottlawsonbc.com/post/shooting-down-ideas https://scottlawsonbc.com/post/shooting-down-ideas
- Brian_K_White 5mo ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 5mo agoI didn't invoke bgas, that was someone else. I can easily explain how this art process could handle BGAs. As mentioned in the article, you could swap the indentation+hand-painted circuit traces with screen-printed traces on a flat surface. Defending one idea isn’t shooting down another. Point to point wiring has its uses, for sure. But calling it an “idiotic ash tray of clay and paint” is shooting something down. But again, i think you’re conflating me with an earlier commenter.
- dang 5mo agoCan you please stop posting so aggressively and breaking the site guidelines? You've done it repeatedly in this thread and we're trying for something else here. If you don't find the current post/comments gratifying of your intellectual curiosity, there are 29 other threads on the frontpage, and if none of those are of interest, you're certain to find something interesting at https://news.ycombinator.com/front https://news.ycombinator.com/front and the links back from there. In the meantime, if you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- skybrian 5mo agoInteresting 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/3mf52azn5oc2h https://bsky.app/profile/castpixel.bsky.social/post/3mf52azn...
- WarmWash 5mo agoIt's an art project
- itsdesmond 5mo agoI 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.
- TranquilMarmot 5mo agoMeant 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.
- lrasinen 5mo agoThey'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.
- fc417fc802 5mo agoIf 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.
- deadeye 5mo agoInteresting project but I can't tell, is the language used supposed to be satire?
- nicole_express 5mo agoThe "Arduina" comment definitely made me think it might be at least a little satirical in nature
- jedimastert 5mo agoIt's not, the entire site appears to be a serious examination of technology and hacking ethics through a feminist lens
- jedimastert 5mo agoHonestly, the language isn't super off or abnormal in other circles, maybe it's a lot more telling that when posted on a tech-oriented site it's seen as ridiculous
- rcxdude 5mo agoI think it feels naive, to me. It's a fun project in terms of experimenting with techniques and materials, but it's very far from relevant in terms of the more abstract goals and ideas they discuss.
- pjc50 5mo agoIt's a bit Sokal Hoax, in that you have to be quite familiar with this kind of thing to be able to distinguish it from satire. But a lot of "artist's statements" are written that way. If you go into a museum and find an incomprehensible objet d'art with a small explanatory plaque next to it, the plaque will be written like this. In a way it's no different from LinkedIn or a VC pitch, the need to hit certain phrases to appeal to the audience.
- chasil 5mo agoI am wondering what of this could be used in high-volume industrial processes. "We had the privilege of spending two days with this skilled craftsman, learning how to identify and collect the clay, and how to model and fire it using old, dry branches collected from the forest ground."
- kennywinker 5mo agoYou can buy clay industrially, if you don’t care where it’s from. But I think the point of this project is to do small-scale production, not develop new techniques for mass manufacturing
- jedimastert 5mo agoI think the entire point of the project and potentially the research group is looking at manufacturing while explicitly/intentionally steering away from high volume and industrial processes.
- pjc50 5mo agoI think they're sufficiently opposed to high-volume industrial processes as a concept that they would select techniques that cannot be scaled in that way. Part of the art, I suppose. Edit: ages ago, I thought of but never finished writing down an idea I had for an "anti-masterwork" for electronics. A traditional "masterwork" demonstrates knowledge of the craft by using standard techniques extremely well. So an "anti-masterwork" would demonstrate knowledge by using nonstandard techniques, or deliberately violating best practices, within the constraint of still having to actually work. A bit of a joke or troll. One of the subideas was "design against manufacturing". Nonreproducible techniques that have to be done by hand. I considered glass and wood but this ceramic would have fit right in. With a bit more aesthetic consideration you could even make electronic jewelery using ceramic and glass.
- tripzilch 5mo agoI love that idea (the "anti-masterwork")
- Brian_K_White 5mo ago[flagged]
- fxtentacle 5mo agoI truly don’t understand what the hope to gain from self-classifying this is “feminist”. “FEMINIST HACKING: BUILDING CIRCUITS AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE – an international art-based research project financed by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF)” Doesn’t that kind of invite the worst type of trolls? They seem to imply that feminist = artistically produced, as opposed to professionally produced PCBs. So masculine = professional? But clearly that wasn’t their intention?
- huflungdung 5mo ago[dead]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo agoAnd it's taxpayer funded, to boot. I definitely wouldn't be happy as an Austrian if I knew my taxes were going to something like this (meanwhile hobbyists elsewhere do projects like this on their own dime).
- oulipo2 5mo ago[flagged]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago[flagged]
- oulipo2 5mo ago[flagged]
- JCTheDenthog 5mo ago[flagged]
- dang 5mo agoPlease don't cross into personal attack and please avoid tit-for-tat spats on HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- VegaKH 5mo ago"We are investigating alternative hardware..." The way she writes like this is serious research is throwing me.
- kennywinker 5mo agoThis is the way that artists speak when describing a new technique or process they have come up with. It’s also something I haven’t seen done before, so it’s legit research to me.
- oulipo2 5mo agoSerious research always start by looking like play. Read Feynmann if you want to know more
- jevndev 5mo ago[flagged]
- kennywinker 5mo agoIf you’re the kind of person who can’t get past “arduina”, then i don’t think you’re going to be interested in any of the other ideas in the tutorial.
- jedimastert 5mo agoGonna +1 what the other person said, but also this research group appears to be like intentionally focused on hacking and technology ethics from a feminist perspective sooooo like maybe it's just not your cup of tea to begin with? Either way, it's probably that no one cares about your opinions on credibility
- MiiMe19 5mo agoI care :D
- culi 5mo ago[flagged]
- jevndev 5mo agoTo clarify, I really do enjoy the premise of the article. I’m a big fan of circuitry-as-art so I was excited to see what new ideas this brought to the table. It’s clear my tone in my original comment made it seem like I was fully disregarding the article and I’m sorry for coming across that way. In retrospect it was very snippy and it shouldn’t have been. I was just very thrown off by the comment in an article that is otherwise taking itself very seriously.
- culi 5mo agoFair enough, thanks for clarifying. Feminist spaces love to play with language. Many people just aren't accustomed to it
- lucid-dev 5mo agoNew generations have new language and are attempting to define themselves through their usage of certain terminology and re-framing of words (Arduino -> Arduina). This isn't satire and it doesn't have to be dismissed. While I don't find increasing the definition and perceived uniqueness of one's personality and identity is necessarily a positive social thing, it's pretty much the most common thing in today's world - so we shouldn't be judgemental of anyone for doing it, even if "their unique terms and identification process" don't match our own. From a project perspective, I find this to be SO creative and VERY HELPFUL energy in terms of truly starting from a primitives/first principles perspective and shows how having a specific ethos and concept allows for development of new forms. Like it or not, it's easy to find out the date that oil (petroleum) will run out. It's easy to see the writing on the wall for anyone who cares to see - a high tech utopia Earth will not be. So enjoying the process of pre-emptively creating new tools, new techniques, and flexible terminology - all of this will BE OF AID to all people who must live through this century together.
- fwipsy 5mo agoWhat date is that? Petrochemicals aren't all stored in a big tank somewhere. My model is that there are many marginal sources which are not cost-effective to exploit, but which could be exploited with better technology or at a higher cost. I do not think we will ever extract all of these; instead, the cost of extraction will increase gradually, shifting incentives towards other energy sources. I don't think anyone really knows what the future will look like.
- paulgerhardt 5mo agoSome napkin math suggests July 11, 2478 AD assuming 1% annual growth and utilization of PtL / Fischer–Tropsch. Closer to March 19, 2063 if you just mean crude oil supplies only.
- tux3 5mo ago>assuming 1% annual growth and utilization of PtL / Fischer–Tropsch Is that assuming a large fraction of the supply will be synthetic fuels created by electrolysis? I would like to see the napkin. I wasn't aware synthetic fuels were on that kind of a trajectory.
- belval 5mo agoFor 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.
- jna_sh 5mo agoFor what it’s worth, these can be fired in a campfire! No kiln or anything necessary.
- analog31 5mo agoAmusing 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.
- pjc50 5mo agoDredged from memory is the "phenolic" circuit board, popular before about 1990. https://picamfg.com/pcb-base-materials/ https://picamfg.com/pcb-base-materials/ "FR-2: Phenolic Resin with Paper Reinforcement" / https://epra.eu/en/sustainability/bio-sourced-and-bio-based-phenolic-resins/ 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.
- pugworthy 5mo agoThis would fit in some ways with the Simplifier site. If you’re not familiar with it, the author posts about making everything from olive oil soap to solar cells from scratch. https://simplifier.neocities.org/ https://simplifier.neocities.org/
- atoav 5mo agoAs 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.
- itsdesmond 5mo agoThey’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.
- atoav 5mo agoYes. 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.
- jand 5mo ago> 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.
- jna_sh 5mo agoGot 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.
- ErroneousBosh 5mo ago> 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 ;-)
- itsdesmond 5mo agoDope. Reminds me of the https://highlowtech.org/ https://highlowtech.org/ research group at MIT Media Lab early 2010s, specifically kit-of-no-parts from Hannah Perner-Wilson and Leah Buechley. They were doing copper electroplated clay dead-bug circuits and other wild shit.
- sucrosesucrose 5mo agoQuintessentially nu-germanic site.
- motbus3 5mo agoI understand but if they succeeded, it would mean that they would be destroying even more the environment as they would be able to take mud from everywhere
- itsdesmond 5mo agoThe materials they are hoping to replace are some of the least accessible, extracted with some of the most caustic industrial processes. What are you even talking about?
- rcxdude 5mo agoThey talk about conflict materials but this is replacing FR4, which is pretty cheap. It's basically glass and glue.
- userbinator 5mo agoTL;DR: basically 1960s thick-film hybrid technology[1], but now drenched in 200% more eco-virtue-signaling BS. Stopped reading after the first few sentences as this is clearly preaching to a choir I'm not in. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_integrated_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_integrated_circuit
- btbuildem 5mo agoAnd we've back to clay tablets! Cuneiform would be fitting.
- harvie 5mo agoCan you just lay pieces of copper wire in the slots and fire it again to melt them into the clay surface?
- swiftcoder 5mo agoNot on an open fire, I think. In a proper temperature-controlled electronic kiln, yes