Firstly, I am fairly inexperienced to electronics and only recently have taken interest in it so I am open to any and all tips. I am currently reading the book on electronics on the forum.

I was at radio shack the other day and I noticed something called a circuit writer pen. It said it could be used to draw traces and jumps on pcb's.

I'm not sure if I understood it completely correctly but would I then be be able to just buy a pcb and completly draw out the circuit diagram and then just solder the parts on? If so, this would be a very handy tool to have. I am working on an led project currently and I'm using a perfboard to connect everything and I am finding it is just a real mess and time consuming to mechanically connect everything and then solder. If any one could clarify what exactly the ciruit writer pen is for and if there is any tips to make laying out leds easier I would be very grateful

 

Well, the circuit writer pen has silver flakes in it suspended in an adhesive, so it conducts when it dries out.

You could use it to make a circuit on a blank board, but that's kind of an expensive way to go, as for $10/ea you don't get much of the "conductive ink" in each pen, and some users report that the dispenser clogs up after a month or so.

Those pens are great for repairing things like auto window defroster wires, mylar ribbon cable, etc. - but you'd really be better off to learn how to solder. Making custom PCB's is also quite do-able. There are a number of threads on here about making PCB's.

 

Thanks, yeah you probably saved me a couple dollars at least and a whole bunch of headaches at most. I saw a PCB tutorial posted by somebody else and bookmarked it, I plan to learn how to do this as soon as I am done reading the book on this forum.

 

How I make PCBs