Circuit 'bending' literally

[haveyouseenhim]

Just thought i would share this. I was just tinkering and decided to try to bend a board. I wonder if any of you had any ideas on how this could be usefully applied in a build.

 

[euronymous0001]

fitting oversized pcb in an enclosure 

[Electron Tornado]

Just be careful how much the board is bent or some components may not fit well. Some ICs are not going to like trying to fit perpendicular to the curve.

How would you secure that PCB in an enclosure?

[Quackzed]

stereo chorus shin pads?

[defaced]

Also bending is going to either put the copper in tension or compression which could cause it to crack (tension) or pull from the substrate (compression). Don't get me wrong, this is cool, but understanding the possible costs is always nice when deciding if "cool" is worth it. 

[haveyouseenhim]

^think of the properties of copper. it should stretch with no problem

[Thomeeque]

 This was not a joke?

[defaced]

^think of the properties of copper. it should stretch with no problem

I did.  I also thought through all of my mechanical engineering classes and all the fun I had doing strength of materials calcs.  I reasoned the following:
Very small cross sections (like copper traces which measure in thousandths of a square inch) don't have alot of strength.  Given the small cross section, it takes very little stress to approach yield strength.  Consider that a pre-stress to the copper.  During service, it will see cyclical loading and thermal cycling which over time can cause it to fail prematurely because of the pre-stress.  

[haveyouseenhim]

This was not a joke?

kind of. just tinkering

[Mustachio]

I had been looking at this stuff called Pyralux a lil while back. Thought it was interesting if I could ever find a use/enclosure shape that would need this.

http://www2.dupont.com/Pyralux/en_US/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Flexible-pcb-sheet-polyimide-kapton-copper-clad-laminate-Pyralux-1-pc-6-x-4-5-/170874708537?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c8ed2239

they make photo sensitized version too.

[haveyouseenhim]

^ oh, wow. its like the stuff in a computer keyboard. i didn't even think about that

[cloudscapes]

barefoot wah?

etch on some capacitive pads height-wise along the curve and bolt it on top of the enclosure. now roll your foot on it! 

[armdnrdy]

I have a hydraulic IC bender that I couldn't find a use for!!!! It bends DIP8 through DIP16 ICs!!!

Seriously, it's good to know that you can bend PC boards. Now if you can figure out how to bend the enclosures so you can fit the curved pc boards inside of them, we'll be in business.

I bet people laughed at the first visionaries when they said the earth was round.

Quite possibly our builds will work better with curved PC board!

Let me explain.... with a flat board the electrons flow through the traces and then fall off of the edge of the board where they're eaten by dragons!!!!! That phenomenon is known as EED. (Electron Eating Dragons) EED causes massive tone sucking in guitar effects!!

[artifus]

haha! from now on all of my schematics will have an unfathomable section labelled 'here be dragons'!

curved pcb could be used to etch your own branded tube protectors or other decorative embellishments to add to your boxes, lit by led perhaps. reminds me of the old record in the oven vinyl ash tray/key dish trick.

[armdnrdy]

Do you think I'm joking about the dragons? Check this out!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XRQ_j2FKws

[haveyouseenhim]

^Where do you get your weed? Lol.

  @artifus  That's not a bad idea.   What I did is put the board in hot water in a vacuum jar and let it soak for two days. Then I took it out and bent it in the vice till it dried thoroughly. 

[mattthegamer463]

The foot idea isn't bad.  Find some effect that uses a 1M pot to control some parameter, etch a board with a large number of horizontal contacts running back and forth across it, solder in some resistors and use your bare foot as the pot wiper.  Might just work.

[Jdansti]

Just thought i would share this. I was just tinkering and decided to try to bend a board. I wonder if any of you had any ideas on how this could be usefully applied in a build.

Here ya go:

[waltk]

A while back, I got some super thin (.008") pcb material as part of a large assortment.  I haven't tried it until now.

This is a 4X6" sheet


It's really thin, and so translucent, it's almost clear.


very bendy too


It was kind of cool to cut it apart with ordinary scissors


It actually etched pretty nicely.  I haven't decided whether to actually build one of these, but I'm guessing that if I keep it in a flexed shape while soldering, it would probably stay that way when all the components are mounted.

[amptramp]

We used to use flexprints which were circuits made of polyimide on some of our projects at work.  They were convenient where you had an awkward space or you were building a printed cable.  Absolutely no good for surface mount - flex it a bit and the components jump off the board.  We also bought some digital panel meters from Analogic using flexprint construction and they all failed long before the equivalent design on a rigid board would fail.