socialbody's picture

TORONTO WEARABLES MEETUP 10: PAPER CIRCUITS HOLIDAY PARTY

This holiday installation of Toronto Wearables Meetup involved a brief presentation on new materials on the market, followed by a play session of making greeting cards using conductive ink. Eric Boyd of Hacklab.to presented new materials including two types of solderable conductive thread, conductive springy cord, sewable SMD leds and the Aniomagic bracelet kits.  In addition, Kate presented the Fabricit, theLilypad Proto Boardnew resistor-less Lilypad LEDs, and conductive ink.  Erin followed up with conductive steel fibre and the flexible Seeeduino.

As a group, we put the conductive ink to test.  We discovered that it could be a little tricky to have a brightly lit LED from the amount of ink used on the cards.  The resistance of the ink is very high, and so a layering technique needed to happen in order to increase conductivity.  Conductivity also increased as the ink dried.  There was the additional challenge of incorporating the coin-cell battery into the card and circuit design, though creative approaches were taken.  In the end, everyone was able to take home their paper circuits, inky fingers and all.

socialbody's picture

This holiday installation of Toronto Wearables Meetup involved a brief presentation on new materials on the market, followed by a play session of making greeting cards using conductive ink. Eric Boyd of Hacklab.to presented new materials including two types of solderable conductive thread, conductive springy cord, sewable SMD leds and the Aniomagic bracelet kits.  In addition, Kate presented the Fabricit, theLilypad Proto Boardnew resistor-less Lilypad LEDs, and conductive ink.  Erin followed up with conductive steel fibre and the flexible Seeeduino.

As a group, we put the conductive ink to test.  We discovered that it could be a little tricky to have a brightly lit LED from the amount of ink used on the cards.  The resistance of the ink is very high, and so a layering technique needed to happen in order to increase conductivity.  Conductivity also increased as the ink dried.  There was the additional challenge of incorporating the coin-cell battery into the card and circuit design, though creative approaches were taken.  In the end, everyone was able to take home their paper circuits, inky fingers and all.