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View Full Version : Conductive laserable material?


Darren Null
11-02-2007, 1:31 AM
Does anyone know if there's a material out there that conducts electricity that can be lasered? Flexible would be good too.

I'm still looking into back-lighting circuitry, and -with LED's in particular- the circuitry can be pretty messy. It would be so much easier if you could knock out vector circuits for a particular situation (corner lights; 12 LED/side area flood; 8 top 8 bottom colourfade etc. etc) and then just scale to the job, burn and attach the LEDs and current-conversion gubbins to the appropriate places. And, of course, burning it myself, I can attach labels to the terminals and Darren-proof things...leaving me free to concentrate on collecting soldering iron burns.

I know there's all sorts of ready-made LED strings out there, but they are pretty expensive for what they are, and they're never the >exact< size you need.

Does my wonder-material exist?
Rodne Gold
11-02-2007, 3:14 AM
You could easily do your own circuit boards with a polyester vinyl as a resist and some ferric chloride as an etch. Use the laser to make the resist mask while its on the board , etch after.
Darren Null
11-02-2007, 4:09 AM
That would work, but is a bit involved for the sort of thing I need and the voltages used for this particular application.

I was thinking more along the lines of cooking-foil-but-stronger-and-not-so-shiny.
Niklas Bjornestal
11-02-2007, 8:21 AM
How about carbon fiber?
Darren Null
11-02-2007, 2:52 PM
I din't know carbon fibre was conductive and I didn't know you could laser it. Hmmm. A bit costly for circuitry in the sort of sizes I'm looking at for back-lighting signs, but it's given me a couple of ideas for other applications.
Allan Wright
11-02-2007, 2:59 PM
While Carbon Fiber is conductive, I'm pretty sure you'd have no luck cutting it with a laser for a PC board type application.
Grant McFarland
11-02-2007, 3:07 PM
I tried carbon fiber. It can be engraved nicely, but if you try to cut it make sure you have a fire extinquisher handy. You might try aluminized mylar.
Darren Null
11-02-2007, 3:09 PM
There goes another plan for world domination. *sigh*
So you can't laser carbon fibre then?