Saturday, April 30, 2005
Silver Paint Track Trials
Conductive tracks were laid on PVC film with lands at each end. Two sets of three were used; painted tracks, painted tracks with additional paint blobbed on the lands, and tracks with blobbed paint allowed to dry before additional blobs were added.
One set was dried for 12 hours, the other for 30 minutes under a fan and then both were covered in 1mm hot-melt EVA. 0.2mm tinned copper wire leads were pushed through from the PVC side and the resistance measured with a bench multimeter.
The fresher tracks were unreliable, exhibiting infinite resistance except for the plain painted track which was intermittent between 60 and 160 ohms.
The older tracks had an extremely intermittent single track, 17-50 ohm blobbed track, and 5-6 ohm for the double-blobbed track.
These results suggested that the earlier PCB experiment should be redone with double-blobbed lands and that the silver paint is allowed to cure overnight before embedding in EVA.
One set was dried for 12 hours, the other for 30 minutes under a fan and then both were covered in 1mm hot-melt EVA. 0.2mm tinned copper wire leads were pushed through from the PVC side and the resistance measured with a bench multimeter.
The fresher tracks were unreliable, exhibiting infinite resistance except for the plain painted track which was intermittent between 60 and 160 ohms.
The older tracks had an extremely intermittent single track, 17-50 ohm blobbed track, and 5-6 ohm for the double-blobbed track.
These results suggested that the earlier PCB experiment should be redone with double-blobbed lands and that the silver paint is allowed to cure overnight before embedding in EVA.
