alt Hacker NewsClay PCB Tutorial
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Dope. Reminds me of the 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.
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.
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.
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...
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...
I feel like foregoing the whole PCB would be better, and just wirewrap, or "free-air" solder.
Quintessentially nu-germanic site.
New 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.
I'm thinking of finer grained applications. Would CNC before firing work? Perhaps finer grained printed stamp plus air-drying clay?
I 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."
This 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.
Interesting project but I can't tell, is the language used supposed to be satire?
I 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?
"We are investigating alternative hardware..."
The way she writes like this is serious research is throwing me.
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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.