Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Curved printed circuit boards

For smart systems we have to develop a hardware project. We have been looking into how to produce printed circuit boards with really simple DIY techniques.

The process is relatively simple, and instructions on how to do it can be found anywhere on the web.
From the outset of the project I have been interested in the limitations of printed circuit boards, especially when considering the massive quantity of PCBs in the world.

One of the things in common with all printed circuit boards is that they are flat. Invariably PCBs are printed directly on a flat surface. Occasionally there are daughter boards that sit at a right angle to the parent board, but there are no PCBs that are printed on a curved surface.

Having curved PCBs would be very useful to the technology industry as it would allow design freedom for products that require PCBs, rather than having to shape the product around the rectangular board.


There is already many techniques for printing on curved surfaces, so I saw the difficulty with curved PCBs in depositing the thin layer of copper onto the fibreglass substrate.

I'm going to attempt to develop a simple method of creating curved printed circuit boards. From preliminary research I have found a technique outlined in the 1925 Popular Mechanics magazine, which demonstrates how to deposit metals onto inorganic surfaces. I will attempt to give this method a go.

Tags: arduino_grapher pcb electronics

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